Child will develop the ability to speak and/ or sign in increasingly complete, complex, precise, and varied ways.
What educators might observe
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Uses facial gestures to engage with adult, such as blinking eyes or sticking out tongue
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Makes physical contact to get educator’s attention, including holding educator’s face in their hands or patting educator’s leg until attention is given
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Uses utterances consistently to refer to people or favorite objects (e.g., ”Mama” for mother, “Dada” for father, and “Ba-ba” for blanket)
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Uses a few words to express needs and wants that are understood in context by adults in the child’s environment (e.g., saying “up” to indicate desire to be held) Note: Expressive language development may pause as a child learns to walk and increase their mobility
Child will develop their ability to listen and understand complete, complex, precise, and varied language.
What educators might observe
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Responds to “yes” and “no”
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Responds to requests such as “wave bye-bye”
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Looks toward door when doorbell rings and educator asks, “Who is it?”
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Responds to simple requests or statements accompanied by gestures, such as when the caregiver asks for a specific toy while pointing at it
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Shows understanding of the names of most familiar objects and people by looking toward them when they are mentioned
Child uses language to relate to others according to the social expectations of their family, community, and culture.
What educators might observe
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Participates in a conversation by making sounds or using words in response to adult (e.g., educator says, “Mmm” when feeding the baby, and the baby says, “Mmm” back)
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Begins to demonstrate turn-taking in conversation by babbling and then pausing and looking to educator to respond
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Makes eye contact when vocalizing or being spoken to, as appropriate to cultural context
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Initiates conversations by bringing objects to show caregivers
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Differentiates between tones of voice (angry, friendly) and smiles back at caregiver as appropriate
Child enjoys, attends to, understands, and makes meanings from spoken and written language of storytelling and books.
What educators might observe
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Looks at a picture book with an educator and makes sounds
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Shows preference for certain stories or texts, such as lift-theflap books
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Smiles, dances, or sings along to familiar songs
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Shows pleasure when caregiver shares an image, tells a story, or sings a lullaby (e.g., smiles or vocalizes)
Child develops the ability to recognize and manipulate the different sounds in spoken language(s).
What educators might observe
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Produces lengthy consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel babbles (e.g., a-ga-a-ga a-ga)
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Makes animal sounds from their home language
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Changes tone when babbling so that their babbles sound more like the speech sounds of their home language
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Demonstrates understanding that a word is a combination of sounds by creating own words to represent something (e.g., calls their brother “Buba”)
Child uses materials and/ or language to make meaning for themselves and/or an audience.
The guidelines don’t define behaviours for this area at this age.
Child views, creates, and makes meaning of visual communication and multimedia documentation, which includes drawings, collections, photographs, videos and displays.
What educators might observe
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Reacts differently to a video of themselves than to a video of another familiar person
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When talking to a family member on a video chat, crawls behind the laptop to see where the person is
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Tries to climb inside or take objects out of images (e.g., positions foot as if to climb inside a car depicted in a book)
