Developmental Skills

• Plays with other children cooperatively
• Explores gender roles (mommy/daddy) and community helper roles (firefighter, shopkeeper)
• Understands limits and defines them for others
• Respects authority, though may still test limits
• Participates in group games
• Chooses own friends
• Is sensitive about teasing
• Likes silly jokes
• Dresses, toilets, and eats independently
• Interested in new experiences
• Increasingly inventive in fantasy play
• Dresses and undresses
• Negotiates solutions to conflicts
• More independent
• Imagines that many unfamiliar images may be "monsters"
• Views self as a whole person involving body, mind, and feelings
• Often cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality

Supporting Activities

• Provide opportunities for role playing and pretending (discourage violent play).
• Group same-age children together or invite a child of similar age for a "play date" to encourage cooperative play.
• Teach simple games. (Duck, Duck, Goose)
• Allow child to help set limits. ("How many turns will each child get?")
• Help child develop strategies for solving social problems. ("Use words, not hitting."; "What else could you do? What will you you say next time?")

Developmental Skills

• Asks questions to gain information (Why...?, How...?)
• Understands routines and can tell what activity comes first or next in a sequence
• Plays with language, making up nonsense words
• Answers questions about stories and retells stories with assistance
• Joins sentences together
• Correctly names some colors
• Understands the concept of counting and may know a few numbers
• Tries to solve problems from a single point of view
• Begins to have a clearer sense of time
• Follows three-part commands
• Recalls parts of a story
• Has mastered some basic rules of grammar
• Speaks in sentences of five to six words
• Speaks clearly enough for strangers to understand
• Tells stories

Supporting Activities

• Read story books to child.
• Ask child questions about stories and have child retell stories.
• Encourage child to act out stories from books or imagination and use different voices for the characters.
• Engage child in what if games to encourage child's own storytelling. ("What if you could fly...?")
• Expand the range of computer software available to the child.
• Arrange trips to the library, zoo, and special events such as parades.
• Play rhyming games with child. ("Can you say three words that rhyme with cat?")

Developmental Skills

• Cuts on a line
• Copies shapes
• Prints a few letters
• Draws to represent objects
• Builds symmetrical structures with blocks
• Makes sculptures with nontoxic modeling clay
• Draws a person with two to four body parts

Supporting Activities

• Provide building toys such as blocks.
• Offer child a variety of surfaces to write on. (construction paper, envelope, chalkboard, cardboard).
• Encourage child to represent objects and activities through drawing.
• Provide nontoxic modeling clay, sand, paper and glue.
• Limit number of different objects child may use at one time.

Developmental Skills

• Walks backwards
• Walks up and down stairs without help, alternating feet
• Hops
• Begins to skip
• Kicks a ball accurately
• Turns somersaults
• Follows movement directions ("Put your hand on your head, take two giant steps, then turn around.")
• Hops and stands on one foot up to five seconds
• Throws ball overhand
• Moves forward and backward with agility

Supporting Activities

• Let child help design obstacle course (balance beams, chairs to climb over, tables to crawl under, see saws).
• Roll and pass large plastic hoops to each other.
• Organize a noncompetitive kick ball game.
• Take child to playground to practice climbing, balancing, and other movement activities.
• Play Simon Says, including challenging movements.
• Skip with child from the house to the car.
• Encourage child to practice walking backwards.
• Play music for dancing and provide musical instruments child can play while dancing or marching.