Chapter 7 Understanding Four and

Five Year Olds

Physical Development

• Increased body strength and coordination makes

movement fun

• Body proportions are changing. By 5 ½ years old,

most children’s legs are about half the length of the

body. This makes running, jumping, and balancing

easier for preschoolers.

• Bones become harder and stronger

• Lose baby teeth, gain permanent teeth

• (good nutrition is important)

Activity: Physical Skills Learning

Centers

• 4yr old Gymnast

• Kid Bodybuilder

• kid piano prodigy

Gross Motor Development • They improve their skills as their body becomes stronger and longer.

• At 4 years old:

– one can hop on one foot

– walk down stairs with alternating feet

– can balance on 1 foot for about 10 seconds.

– Can walk backwards, toe to heel for 4 steps.

• At 5 years old:

– Begin to skip

– Ride a bike with training wheels

– Can walk forward and backward on a balance beam.

– They can climb fences

– march to music

– Catching and throwing improves.

• As the child’s brain matures, there is better coordination of motor and visual

systems.

Fine Motor Development • String beads

• Work with small games or puzzles (by 5 yrs they can put

together18-35 pieces)

• Build straight and tall towers from blocks

• Writing and drawing skills improve quickly.

• Drawing skills are more refined and adults can recognize what

they’re drawing.

• Begins to recognize letters. They can distinguish between writing

and non-writing

• They can copy and print a few letters, but not often correctly. Mirror

images are difficult.

• Fairly skilled with a writing tool. They can stay in the lines fairly

well.

• They begin to understand letters and sounds are linked.

Discussion & brainstorm:

• Discuss and brainstorm activities for encouraging

preschoolers to practice printing their names. How much

emphasis should you place on this skill sand accuracy at this

age?

Self Help Skills

• Dressing and undressing with little help

• Can tell front from the back of clothing

• Can buckle belts and close zippers

• By 5, may even button and unbutton

• Can put shoes on the right feet; may tie own shoelaces

• Self feeding is easier. They enjoy helping with serving.

They can use spoons/forks with ease

• Can cut some foods with knife.

• Better able to take care of hygiene

• Can brush own teeth

• Can comb their hair

Discuss:

• What kinds of activities or toys would encourage

self help skills?

Cognitive Development

• This is a time for huge gains.

• Preschoolers have become more skilled in

thinking without having to act things out, so they

have a better understanding of symbols than

younger children.

• They have increased language comprehension

and expressive language.

• You can test a preschooler’s recognition and

recall skills.

Play changes • Children start creating their own symbols at this age,

and this is reflected in their play. Instead of imitating

adults, they begin to add their own ideas. New

symbols begin in art. Before 4 years old, children tend

to scribble or just draw simple shapes

• Understanding symbols is important for developing

more advanced cognitive skills. Cognitive

development during the preschool years helps prepare

children for future learning during the school years.

2 year old 3 year old 4 year old 5 year old

Preschoolers are curious

• They want to learn why things happened around

them. They ask a lot of questions and are trying

to make sense of the world. They still have flaws

in their thinking, but asking questions again and

again makes their thinking become more and

more logical.

• Your curriculum should promote children’s

cognitive growth. As you provide new

experiences, the children’s vocabularies will grow.

They will learn new concepts.

What kinds of skills does having a

class pet teach?

• Size, color, method of eating, new vocabulary

words. Each new experience helps the children

grow intellectually.

• Role Playing Activity: A teacher is comforting a

child who is very sad at the loss of a beloved pet.

Evaluate the teacher’s effectiveness in meeting

the child’s need.

Language Comprehension

Skills

• New words related to space increase their understanding

(beside, above, below, backward, bottom, forward) they

also understand down, low, different and thin.

• As you instruct these students, children will be able to

understand and follow directions. “Place the green block

behind the blue block”

• They become better at following 3 step commands. “ Pick

up the puzzle, put it on the table, and wash your hands”

However, if you don’t sequence the directions correctly, it

may confuse the child.

Language Comprehension skills

cont.

• Children have a better understanding of singular and plural.

Sandwich vs. cookies

• Children start understanding the passive voice sentence.

“the orange was eaten by Brock.” A younger child would

think that the orange ate Brock. The 4-5 year old would

understand that Brock ate the orange.

• Words and phrases have more than 1 meaning,

preschoolers can become confused by this. “Wanda just

flew out the door.” or “I’m dying of hunger” (slang phrases)

Reading

• Most 4-5 year olds cannot read, but are developing pre-

reading skills. This starts by understanding symbolism.

Children first need to understand that a group of letters on

paper can symbolize any object.

• Preschoolers can recognize and name many letters of the

alphabet as well as their own names.

• They enjoy reading the same stores over and over and may

be able to pick out words they recognize.

• They can guess words they don't recognize by looking at

the first letter and the pictures for clues.

Expressive Language skills

• Children at this age tend to talk to you rather than

converse with you.

• When you talk about a subject, they may interrupt

you to talk about something entirely unrelated.

• In later years they will be better at 2-way

communication.

Articulation

• The ability to produce sounds of language. This

improves greatly at ages 4-5. Most children still have

trouble making the ch sound and the th sound. Others

may have trouble with the S sound, causing a lisp.

• Some preschoolers have stuttering problems.

Stuttering is the repeated sound or words and pausing

for unusually long times while speaking. For most

preschoolers, stuttering is a result of thinking faster

than they can talk. As children’s speech ability catches

up to their thinking ability, the stuttering problem tends

to disappear.

Vocabulary

• Most 4 year olds have about 1500 words in their

vocabularies.

• 5 year olds: 2000.

• Children at this age may make up their own meanings to

some words.

• They have mainly concrete nouns and action verbs in

their vocabularies. They are beginning to add modifiers

and adjectives to their vocabularies, so children would be

unlikely to use the words freedom or unfair unless they

were copying the words of adults.

Imitation

• They do imitate phrases they hear from adults of

TV. Often they don’t know what these words

mean, only that they’ve heard them before.

• Do as I say…not as I do

• Children see…children do

Grammar

• Grammar improves during preschool years. Children start

to learn there are exceptions to grammar rules. (ate, ran,

and went)

• They still put -ed at the end of words occasionally.

• They learn how to properly ask questions.

– 3 year old might ask “why the sky is blue?”

– 4 or 5 year old might ask “Why is the sky blue?”

• Some forms of pronouns give preschoolers trouble still.

“Him and me are going to the zoo.”

• They also have trouble with noun and verb agreement

“Tommy don’t have a crayon”

Math Skills

• Number concepts become easier for children of

this age.

• Rote counting is gained by most children before

they understand that each number represents a

certain amount.

• Most 4 year olds can rote count to 9

• Most 5 year olds can rote count to 20

• Rote counting develops at different rates,

therefore you need to observe children to make

sure your curriculum fits their skill levels.

Math Skills cont.

• True counting, in which an object is counted for

each number named, develops more slowly.

Math concepts cont. • At 4 years old, they usually recognize numerals 1-5

• 5 year olds usually recognize 1-10. They can

even dial their own phone numbers.

• Other math skills develop at this age. They’re

better able to recognize shapes and can

understand terms related to size and number

such as short, fat, tallest, same, first and last.

• They begin to understand money concepts. Most

can identify a penny, nickel and dime. They don’t

understand the value of the money though.

• Time concepts are more clear but are still

confusing. They start to understand the

difference between today, tomorrow and

yesterday but they don’t understand how much

time an hour or 5 minutes is.

Social-Emotional Development

• Preschoolers are helpful, cheerful and

cooperative.

• Emotions are changing in children at this age. As

they learn and grow, the causes of happiness,

fear, anger, and sadness change.

• The ways children react to these emotions

change too.

Social Development

• Companionships and friendships are important at this age.

Preschoolers are becoming more independent of adults.

They like to play on their own or with other children. They

may still need adults though to settle disputes or to help get

materials.

• They tend to have a few friends, usually of the same sex.

They are more likely to share their toys with a friend.

• Over 1/3 of a four year old child’s play is solitary play. By

age 5, play involves more interaction and cooperation.

• Children of this age accept supervision. They know their own

abilities and realize adults have reasons for rules.

Emotional Development

• They start to realize that there are other ways of showing

love other than a hug or physical signs of affection. They

start to realize that sharing or helping with a task is a way of

showing you care.

• Children may ask for help with a task even if they don’t need

it just to assure them that you care.

• Children start to develop a sense of humor. Laughter is a way

of expressing their happiness. They also laugh at things they

know are unusual , like a dog that says “meow” in a story.

Fear

• Causes of fear change at this age. Children are still afraid of

imagined creatures, such as monsters and ghosts. They

start to understand there is a difference between the real

and the imagined. This helps children deal with some of

these fears.

• 5 year olds are more afraid of being hurt. They know of

more things that can hurt them. They may be afraid of

doctors and dentists or of high places and dogs because of

prior experiences.

• Children work through fears in play. It helps them act out

some of their intense feelings and deal with their fears.

Discuss:

• Parents and caregivers may unintentionally

increase children’s fears when teaching about

strangers. How can you teach children about

strangers without adding to their fears?

Anger

• Less things anger preschoolers than toddlers.

• However, they can get angry if they cannot reach their

goals.

• They are more likely to use their words and yelling rather

than kicking and screaming.

• Some preschoolers respond more physically to anger than

other preschoolers by hitting, kicking, pushing, etc. They

may not have learned better ways of expressing anger from

adult role models or they may want attention.

Jealousy

• Jealousy may surface in many ways: regression,

physical problems such as stomachaches or

nightmares.

• These children need to be reassured that they are

still loved and given a little extra attention to make

them feel special.

Sadness

• 4-5 year olds become aware of situations of

sadness, like death.

• Children are not always sure how to express

sadness. They may deal with sadness in play.

• Often they need help from adults to learn that it is

okay to cry and talk about their feelings. They

need adults to model appropriate responses to

sadness and to provide clear explanations.

Teaching 4 and 5 year olds

• Children of this age enjoy feeling needed and important and

like to be helpful. You need to carefully select helpers so that

all get a chance to help even from those not as vocal.

• Children at this age love talking. After you read a story, the

children may enjoy retelling a story.

• They are usually able to retell it in sequence and in detail.

• Children of this age will imitate your speech. For this reason

you need to be careful of your statements. You should not

use words or statements you wouldn’t want them repeating.

Teaching 4 and 5 year olds cont.

• You do not need to function as a playmate as much now,

but you will handle more disputes among children.

• You will want to add new ideas to play also.

• Some children will have imaginary friends to which you

can encourage and tend to.

Teaching 4 and 5 year olds cont.

• Children are proud of their possessions and may enjoy

bringing toys to preschool, or will be proud of new shoes

or a jacket. Asking children questions about their things

can help build their self esteem.

• Their attention span is increasing and they enjoy working

on projects such as woodworking, cooking, sculpting clay,

etc. As they get older they will engage for longer periods

of time. The average time spent in most activities at this

age is about 7 minutes.

What Does 'High-Quality' Preschool

Look Like?