Core domains of development

• Show confidence in your child’s abilities.
• Provide praise and encouragement to build self-confidence and self-esteem. 
•  Make sure there are times for one-to-one interaction with your child. 
• Explain personal space: Tell your child that it’s important for everyone to have some personal space to feel comfortable, and practice acceptable ways to interact with someone during playtime. 
• Practice social overtures: Teach your children the proper way to start a conversation, get someone’s attention, or join a group of kids who are already playing together. There are all situations that can be discussed and brainstormed at the dinner table, or in the car on the way to school or activities. 

• Head out into nature and explore flowers. Count and compare flower petals! 
• Go on a hunt for a number and match it to its corresponding dots. 
• Sort through objects by color, and count how many you have of each. 
• Fill a dump truck with objects (like Dominoes!) and count how many you can fit in there. 
• Estimate first for some fun and then count items.
• Have a counting race in the front yard and pick dandelions in the process. 
• Provide open-ended resources that encourage the child to out their ideas and build their sense of achievement. Items could include boxes, tubes, blocks, bags, small baskets, rings, wooden pegs, short lengths of chain, pine cones, pebbles, shells, fabrics, paper, and cards.

• Fold a sheet of paper in half. 
• Draw straight lines and circles.
• Turn single pages in a book. 
• Snip the edges using the thumb and fingers. 
• Build a tower of up to 10 large blocks. 
• Put together large linking blocks. 
• Cut across a piece of paper (by 3 years old). 
• Use a fork to eat. 
• Manage large buttons. 
• Put on some items of clothing with supervision. 
• Decorating play dough constructions. 

1. Questions to keep the conversation going... 

• What else can you tell me about that? 
• Seriously? Then what happened? 
• Interesting. Is there more I can hear about? 
• How do you feel about what happened?

2. Reading stories 

• Making predictions before reading using cover illustrations and titles. 
• Asking questions before, during and at the End of a story, making predictions about what might happen next, making connections and evaluating. 
• Summarizing the story, retelling, and sequencing events.