Before Grade R

One, two, I see you

Long before school starts, South Africa has a plan for its youngest children: well-being first, play as the way they learn, and a name and a sense of belonging. Here it is, with what the research adds and what to try at home.

By the Story for Me team · 30 October 2026 · 7 min read

A girl in a yellow raincoat kneels on a quiet street under jacaranda trees, drawing in chalk, while glowing outlines of a rocket, a dragon, a steam train and a whale float above her and a puppy looks on.

South Africa’s curriculum framework for babies has a counting lesson for nappy time. The National Curriculum Framework for Children from Birth to Four, or NCF, which guides the years before Grade R, suggests singing number rhymes “during dressing up and changing nappies for example, one, two, I see you”.¹ It is a small line, and a fair summary of the whole document: in these years, learning is meant to happen in play and in the ordinary business of the day, long before anyone sits at a desk.

In short

The NCF covers birth to four. Instead of school subjects it has six areas of learning, and it calls well-being the key one, which supports all the others.
It treats play as the way young children learn, and it ties a child’s name and sense of belonging to how resilient they will be.
At home, the ideas are simple: talk and count together, use their name, and share a book every day if you can, from birth.

What is the NCF?

The Department of Basic Education published the NCF in February 2015, and it covers children from birth until they start Grade R.¹

The NCF has four stages: babies, from birth to about 18 months; toddlers, from about 18 months to three years; young children, from about three to four; and “Towards Grade R”, from about four until children start Grade R, “in the year in which they turn five”.¹

So, whatever you may read, it is not a framework for birth to five, nor the Grade R curriculum. It stops where Grade R begins, and CAPS, the school curriculum, takes over: what children learn in Grade R picks up the story.

What are the six areas of early learning?

The NCF sorts early learning into six Early Learning and Development Areas:¹

Well-being
Identity and belonging
Communication
Exploring mathematics
Creativity
Knowledge and understanding of the world

Think of them as areas of growth: a walk to the shop can touch all six. But one holds up the rest. “Well-being is the key Early Learning and Development Area which supports all other Early Learning and Development Areas,” the framework says.¹ For a four-year-old, well-being includes learning “to calm themselves; to recognise feelings and put them into words”.¹

A girl with long braids leans out of an open safari vehicle at night, wide-eyed and laughing, as a spotlight picks out impala and a fawn, with an owl on a branch and a giraffe behind. — Knowledge and understanding of the world is the sixth of the NCF’s areas. A still from our animals theme.

Why does the NCF put play at the centre?

“Babies and young children learn when they play,” the framework says, and it describes how that play grows up. At first it is solitary: a baby plays alone, or with whoever is nearest. Then comes parallel play, alongside other children, and then cooperative play, with them. Adults, it says, should give children “plenty of opportunities to learn through play, also called active learning.”¹

The NCF’s twelve principles are “captured in a child’s voice”, and the seventh puts it most simply: “Play and hands-on (active) experiences enhance my learning and development.”¹ A framework says what a country values; it can’t show what works. The research below looks at some of the same ground.

Why does a child’s name matter so much?

The NCF ties a child’s sense of self to how well they cope. “The stronger the child’s identity and sense of belonging, the more resilient he or she will be,” it says, and it starts with the basics: “Each child has the right to a name, a family, shelter and so on.”¹

The name runs right through the framework. With babies, adults are to “call the baby’s name and talk to her using her own name.” Later, “Gradually children may recognise formal writing such as their own names”, and elsewhere it pictures children “‘writing’ their names on their work.”¹

Research suggests a name is often where letters begin: young children tend to know the first letter of their own name better than other letters, though at first it is the letter’s name they know, not its sound.³ Hearing the sound is Grade R work, explained in first sounds and phonics.

How do numbers begin?

Long before school, and often in conversation. For toddlers, the NCF asks adults to “repeat the counting words children use and show them how counting helps us to find out ‘how many’”. Towards Grade R, children “count concrete objects; use fingers, marks on paper and pictures to represent number; make simple estimations”, and one suggested activity has them put “the number one on an item that belongs to them”.¹

“How many” is the hard part. In small studies, children usually grasp that the last number counted tells you how many at about three and a half,⁴ so a child who can recite to ten may not yet know what five is, and at two or three that is normal.

What parents say seems to matter, especially counting real things you can both see,⁵ and how children learn to count has the studies and games for it. The parent page of our counting book, The Golden Road, suggests the same habit with its pictures: one touch for each thing, then “So how many?” The book itself, being new, hasn’t been put to the test; the habit is the one those studies point to.

In 2024, the Thrive by Five Index measured how South Africa’s four-year-olds in early learning programmes are doing: 5,001 children aged 50 to 59 months, in 1,388 programmes across all nine provinces. Fewer than half (42%) were on track for early learning, and early numeracy was among the weakest areas.⁶ The researchers ask that 2024 be treated as the baseline.

What about feelings, friends and taking turns?

The framework hopes four-year-olds will “work with others, take turns and share”, and among its advice to adults is one plain line: “Help children to put feelings into words.”¹

The urge to help comes early. In small laboratory studies in Germany, children as young as 18 months helped an adult who had dropped something or couldn’t open a cupboard, without being asked or rewarded.⁷ Fair sharing comes later. What helps it along, and what a reward for helping can do, is in sharing and taking turns.

When should you start reading to a baby?

At birth, say America’s paediatricians. In 2024 the American Academy of Pediatrics advised doctors to encourage shared reading “beginning at birth and continuing at least through kindergarten”, starting in the newborn period and, when possible, in the neonatal intensive care unit.⁸

A book brings words that everyday talk doesn’t, and more talk besides. In all-day audio recordings made by the parents of 43 babies aged 9 to 18 months, sharing a book produced more parent talk, more baby talk and more back-and-forth than other activities, toy play included.⁹

Some of the best evidence comes from Cape Town. In a randomised trial in Khayelitsha, carers of babies aged 14 to 16 months, among them 13 grandmothers, joined eight weekly book-sharing sessions taught in isiXhosa, and afterwards reported that their babies understood and said more words, with gains in attention too.¹⁰ A second Khayelitsha trial, with caregivers of children aged 21 to 28 months, found gains in language and attention, some still there six months later.¹¹

Timing may matter, though: a later Western Cape trial, with three-and-a-half-year-olds, found no difference between the groups, and its authors suggest starting earlier.¹² What those trials did and didn’t show, in full, is in reading aloud to children: what the research says.

What if my child isn’t doing these things yet?

The NCF describes hopes, not a checklist for each birthday. Children vary widely, and many ages in the research above are averages from small groups.

One Thrive by Five finding is worth holding on to. The strongest predictor of children’s learning outcomes was what the researchers call Task Orientation: a child’s ability “to concentrate, persist, and show interest”.⁶ A correlation can’t hand you a recipe, but it is a reminder that concentration and interest count for a lot.

If something worries you, about hearing, speech or anything else, ask your clinic sister or your doctor.

What can you do at home?

None of this needs anything you have to buy.

Pick one or two to start.

Try this at home

With a baby, use their name often, and sing a counting rhyme at nappy time: “one, two, I see you”.
Share a book every day, for ten minutes if you can, the way the Khayelitsha carers were taught: let your child hold it and turn the pages, point to what they look at and name it, and ask “Where is the…?” before “What is this?”
With a toddler, count real things in front of you, and go past three: stairs, spoons, peas. Then ask, “So how many?”, and sometimes, “Can you give me three?”
Around four, after a story, ask “What happened?” and “Have you ever seen one like that?”
Let them “write” their name on a drawing, however it comes out, and stick a number one on something that is theirs.
When they help, thank them warmly, rather than with a sweet.

The framework’s words on this page are from the Department of Basic Education’s NCF (2015), which covers children up to Grade R. CAPS is our reference; the Department of Basic Education doesn’t endorse us.

Sources

Department of Basic Education (2015). The South African National Curriculum Framework for Children from Birth to Four. Pretoria: DBE, pp. 7, 8, 12, 15, 30, 31, 37, 40, 42, 48, 51, 52 and 77. education.gov.za (PDF)
Department of Basic Education. ECD function shift. education.gov.za
Treiman, R., & Broderick, V. (1998). What’s in a name: Children’s knowledge about the letters in their own names. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 70(2), 97–116. doi.org/10.1006/jecp.1998.2448
Wynn, K. (1990). Children’s understanding of counting. Cognition, 36(2), 155–193. doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(90)90003-3
Gunderson, E. A., & Levine, S. C. (2011). Some types of parent number talk count more than others. Developmental Science, 14(5), 1021–1032. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2011.01050.x
Giese, S., Pettersson Gelander, G., Cook, C., Carnegie, T., Tredoux, C., Dawes, A., Biersteker, L., Beukes, S., Pahla, Z., & Kika-Mistry, J. (2025). Thrive by Five Index 2024: National Findings. Cape Town: DataDrive2030 (survey led by the Department of Basic Education). thrivebyfive.co.za (PDF)
Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees. Science, 311(5765), 1301–1303. doi.org/10.1126/science.1121448
Klass, P., Miller-Fitzwater, A., High, P. C., & AAP Council on Early Childhood (2024). Literacy promotion: An essential component of primary care pediatric practice: Policy statement. Pediatrics, 154(6), e2024069090. doi.org/10.1542/peds.2024-069090
Clemens, L. F., & Kegel, C. A. T. (2021). Unique contribution of shared book reading on adult-child language interaction. Journal of Child Language, 48(2), 373–386. doi.org/10.1017/S0305000920000331
Vally, Z., Murray, L., Tomlinson, M., & Cooper, P. J. (2015). The impact of dialogic book-sharing training on infant language and attention: A randomized controlled trial in a deprived South African community. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 56(8), 865–873. doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12352
Dowdall, N., Murray, L., Skeen, S., Marlow, M., De Pascalis, L., Gardner, F., Tomlinson, M., & Cooper, P. J. (2021). Book-sharing for parenting and child development in South Africa: A randomized controlled trial. Child Development, 92(6), 2252–2267. doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13619
Koopowitz, S. M., Maré, K. T., Lake, M., du Plooy, C., Hoffman, N., Donald, K. A., Malcolm-Smith, S., Murray, L., Zar, H. J., Cooper, P., & Stein, D. J. (2024). Efficacy of a dialogic book-sharing intervention in a South African birth cohort: A randomized controlled trial. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 128, 152436. doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2023.152436