Learning - 2 to 3 years
© DK
The way in which your child learns changes quite a lot in the third year, particularly in the second half. As a toddler, your child was learning about separate things, single events, one experience at a time.
She may have satisfied her curiosity and explored that experience as far as she could, absorbing a great deal of new information in the process, but she rarely related it to anything else in her life.
Learning from experiences
Information is sieved and sifted, it is matched up to other experiences to see if they fit together or if they differ very greatly, and it is then put into similar or different pigeon holes. Your child starts to think and plan ahead, and becomes much more creative and imaginative. Gradually all the information that she has absorbed over the past years becomes available to apply to a given situation. Your child suddenly has an orchestra of thoughts that she can command at will.
This new ability to think, imagine and create changes your child's world considerably. Many familiar things close at hand in the house or garden no longer contain the same interest or excitement for her. She needs wider horizons; she needs to explore, to push the frontiers of her experience and knowledge further out.
Your child becomes very interested in how things work at this time and her conversation will constantly be punctuated with “Why?”. She is avid for information and constantly asks questions. It's as if her brain wants more and more information to put into the computer to start using immediately. One of the most important steps in your child's intellectual development is when she understands that time is not just in the present, but that there was a past and there will be a future; when she understands yesterday and tomorrow. Planning for the future is one of the most critical aspects of our intellect that makes us different from lower animals and it is during the third year that you will hear your child say for the first time, “I'll eat that later”, or “We can go tomorrow”.
Intellectual development between 2 to 3 years
Two years and three months
She will try to build houses and castles with blocks and will repeat new words when you encourage her. She knows who she is and can say her name. She'll begin to pit her will against yours, and may become rather negative. She'll say the word “No” more and more often and won't always fit in with your wishes.
Two and a half years
She loves helping you and will help with chores, putting things away, bringing things to the table. She'll know both her first name and surname. She can draw horizontal lines and vertical lines and can name several common objects. A boy will have noticed that his sex organs stick out from his body whereas those of his mother, and of his little girlfriends, do not.
Two years and nine months
She'll begin to ask questions. She'll know the difference between boys and girls. She'll learn nursery rhymes and will be able to repeat them. She'll begin to understand numbers. She'll try to draw a circle but won't be able to complete it successfully without help.
Three years
She'll like to play with other children. She'll know more nursery rhymes and will almost be able to draw a circle. She'll know the difference between such words as on, under and behind and will be able to form quite complicated sentences.
New Babycare
Copyright © 2009 Dorling Kindersley
Text copyright © 2009 Miriam Stoppard
Posted 30.06.2010
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