wordsmart

  • learning objectives for toddlers
  • listening

language

  • Identifies familiar people, animals, and objects when prompted
  • Follows simple requests not accompanied by gestures
  • speaking

using language

  • Names familiar people, animals, and objects
  • Uses some words and word-like sounds and is understood by most familiar people
  • Uses three- to four-word sentences; may omit some words or use some words incorrectly
  • Tells simple stories about objects, events, and people not present; lacks many details and a conventional beginning, middle, and end

conversation

  • Initiates and attends to brief conversation
  • Uses appropriate eye contact, pauses, and simple verbal prompts when communicating
  • prereading

phonetics

  • Fills in the missing rhyming word; generates rhyming words spontaneously
  • Sings songs and recites rhymes and refrains with repeating initial sounds
  • Segments phrases into single words

letters

  • Listens to letters introduced through songs, language, and print
  • Begins to learn alphabet and recognizes that pictures are used to communicate language

print

  • Shows growing enjoyment in books and reading
  • Recognizes that books are different from other objects and can be used for storytelling

narrative

  • Uses words to describe or name pictures when reading
  • Retells some events in a familiar story with modeling and assistance
  • With prompting and support, responds to simple questions about a story
  • prewriting

writing

  • Makes controlled linear scribbles