At 3.5 years old...

Warning: The following is abit mundane but erm, it's my personal journal to track N's development. I want to be able to look back next year at this time and be able to see how much he has progressed. I did something similar last year here and i am glad i did. I can see how much my baby has grown this year and the things he has forgotten! PAH!

Language:

- has a sizeable bank of vocabulary

- can read a book on his own but still wants mama to read aloud for him

- can read the instructions on a worksheet on his own, understands and excutes it.

- can spell words like bus, egg, flower, plane, bee, coffee (learnt on his own by playing iphone!), frog, no, mama, papa, Singapore, Malaysia, Christmas, his name...and others that i am not keeping track of

- can finally write alphabets 'i', 'j','u','o'

- can decipher the begining and ending sounds of a word

- has learnt collective nouns on animals i.e. a herd of elephant, a mob of kangaroos..

- knows when to use plural words correctly i.e. one bird, two birdS

Chinese

- can read simple mandarin sentences and hence simple books independently

- learnt from school the chinese writing strokes, is able to write out the strokes independently

- cannot converse in mandarin!!!

Maths

- can count up to erm 1000 i think.

- understands the quantitative values of numbers

- recognizes the numbers in words i.e. seventeen, thirty, eighty etc

- understands the concept of greater and lesser, more and less

- can skip count in 2s, 5s, and 10s, and i think 100s & 1000s but may not necessary understand the concept for instance, he may not know that the multiples of 2 are 2 digits apart i.e. 2, 4,6

- can add sums i.e.

• x+10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90 where x= numbers from 1 to 9,
• y+100, where y =1 to 99
• z+1 where z=1 t0 1000 (and maybe more)
• p+10 where p = 10 to 90

- can substract i.e. w-1, where w=1 to 1000

- knows volumeric shapes

- knows the names and number of sides of polygons

Geography

- still recognises world flags and can match them to the countries

- knows the capital cities of China, USA, Italy, Germany, Malaysia and Indonesia

- knows where these landmarks can be found : Dome of the Rock, The Kabah, Statue of Liberty, Great wall of China, Taj Mahal, Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef

- knows which continents some countries belong to i.e Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Mexico...

- can sort animals by continents

Others

- can tell the time by the hour i.e. 9, 10, 12 o'clock

- knows the days of the week (and has been asking us 'where are we going on monday, tuesday....friday?)

- begining to count money (dollar notes)...still working on it and recognise the value of each coin

- knows the terms for animal youngs i.e. kitten is baby of a cat, calf to an elephant...

-understands the concept of before & after, oppossite words

- can recite and remember 4 bible verses 

Speech & Social

Apart from the academics, N has also improved alot in his speech and social skills. It seemed he woke up from his deep slumber after he turned 3 in July. First half the year, he was horribly quiet but now he is noisy and nosey (keeps asking as where we are going, what we are doing and eating). He couldn't pronounce alot of basic words in Jan this year like 'monkey, zebra' and even 'mummy'! But now he can and speaking in sentences. Only weeks ago, he started to properly pronounce the 'n' sound. Previously he would drop the 'n' sound in words like 'no, banna, china' etc. Now he can say these words very clearly.

Socially, he has also grown out of his shell. He is begining to reply to strangers although selectively and softly. He is also begining to enjoy playing with other children when there are no toys to distract him that is.