Birth to Age 3 - Cognitive Development Guidelines

Babies start learning from the moment they are born, and some of the things they learn in the first months of their lives are basic skills and ideas that will be directly taught to them years later.  Helping infants and toddlers connect with the world around them, through book reading and storytelling, is the best way to build foundations for reading. The ideas children make during these interactions and the new words they learn will help them later when they make connections while learning new ideas in science and social studies.

Writing

Learning to write involves children’s ability to control writing tools. This ability comes from years of developing fine motor skills beginning in infancy. Giving infants a number of materials to play with helps them develop hand-eye coordination and control of their hands and fingers. An especially important activity to prepare toddlers for writing is drawing. It gives children another chance to practice fine motor skills and helps children connect marks on paper with spoken words or messages.      

Make-Believe Play

Engaging in make-believe play is another great way for children of this age to learn. During play, they can use all of their five senses to try out new things, make predictions about what will happen, and solve problems. Play lets children practice early math and language skills in a way that makes sense to them.     

Math

Another way to help children build their growing understanding of math is for caregivers and parents to often use math-related ideas in their interactions with babies and toddlers. Long before babies learn number words, they show an ability to notice between quantities and when a new object is larger or smaller than another one. These early ideas about numbers and size lay the foundation for understanding more advanced mathematical concepts.  Adults can help infants and toddlers in their math learning by helping them explore objects that differ in size, shape, and quantity. Learning to tell the difference between objects based on their different qualities is also important for developing logic and reasoning.    Early development of logical reasoning and other important brain processes not only helps children's future success in school subjects, but also helps them solve problems across a number of different situations.