Relations
Preschool age children will begin to develop relational terms. These include location and time and are heavily influenced by syntactic complexity, the amount of adult usage, and underlying cognitive concept.
Temporal Relations: when, before, since, while, before, after, until Children will initially produce these as prepositions but then as conjunctions joining clauses. A child will rely on the order of mention, syntax, and knowledge of real-life sequences to know how to use temporal relations. Note that many preschoolers don't follow multiple directions well and will often leave out one of the steps.
Local Prepositions2 years of age: in, on, and to
3 years of age: next to, behind, in back of, in front of |
Physical Relations: thick/thin, more/less, easier/harderChildren will first learn that these words are opposites and then will learn how to use them. The positive relation (think big compared to small, and long compared to short) are learned before the negative relation. Learning these terms is all dependent on context.
Kinship Terms: refer to family membersPreschool age children have a limited knowledge of kinship terms. They will begin to learn the definition of the person but not the relation. Simpler relations like Mommy and Daddy are learned first, followed by brother and sister.
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