Child development at 4 years old

Children are like tiny sponges when they are four years old; they absorb everything around them and develop remarkably. An explosion of development in a number of domains, such as language, social skills, and motor abilities, characterizes this fascinating stage. It’s a time when their personalities truly begin to emerge and their curiosity knows no bounds.

Children’s communication skills develop during these formative years, and they start to understand increasingly complex concepts. They begin to construct longer sentences and quickly increase their vocabulary. Additionally, during this time, they start to pick up on social cues and become more conscious of their surroundings, which enriches and deepens their interactions with others.

Youngsters who are four years old are developing their motor skills in addition to their cognitive and language abilities. They might be able to start drawing familiar shapes, jump off a tricycle with both feet off the ground, or even ride a tricycle. Their imaginative playtime increases, and they take pleasure in participating in creative expression activities.

You can encourage your child’s development and help them reach their full potential by being aware of the important developmental milestones at this age. For the child and those who care about them, it’s a lovely time of learning and exploration.

Aspect Details
Cognitive Development At 4 years old, children begin to understand simple concepts like time and sequence. They can follow two-step instructions and enjoy sorting objects by shape or color.
Language Skills Kids at this age use complete sentences and can have conversations. They often make up stories and enjoy listening to simple books read aloud.
Motor Skills Four-year-olds are improving their fine and gross motor skills. They can draw simple shapes, use scissors, and run, jump, and climb with more control.
Social Skills They start to show more interest in playing with other children and sharing. They are learning to take turns and understand basic rules of games.
Emotional Development Children may express a wider range of emotions and can start to understand how others feel. They are learning to manage their emotions and might have tantrums when upset.

Age characteristics

  • The baby is still active and energetic, but has become more assiduous and is able to do one thing for about 20 minutes. Fine motor skills are constantly improving. Most four-year-olds especially like drawing.
  • After 4 and a half years, the child changes externally, as he begins to actively develop muscle and bone tissue.
  • For a child over 4 years old, the social component of development is very important. The baby makes friends among other children, trying to find a “common language” with them. The child is good at noticing the feelings of other people, knows how to empathize. The baby has learned to formulate his own thoughts in words. Many children of 4 years of age have imaginary friends.
  • A 4-year-old child continues to master his native speech. Many children of this age are characterized by a slight lisp. The vocabulary of a four-year-old grows very rapidly (up to 2500-3000 words by the age of 5). The baby"s speech is enriched with expression and intonation. The baby voices his own actions and everything he sees, and also constantly asks a large number of questions. In about 5% of children, speech development at the initial stages is accompanied by stuttering.
  • The intellectual capabilities of a child aged 4-4.5 years increase significantly. The baby is ready to learn letters and numbers.

What a child should be able to do?

Most kids between the ages of 4-4.5 can:

  • Run, maintaining balance when changing direction or pace of movement.
  • Stand on 1 leg for several seconds, and also quickly jump from this position several times.
  • Jump forward on both legs.
  • Jump from a small height (up to 20 cm).
  • Walk along a bench, maintaining balance.
  • Play with a ball – throw and catch, hit objects from a distance.
  • Ride a bicycle.
  • Speak clearly and distinctly, making up phrases of 6-8 words. Maintain a conversation.
  • Play with other children in a group or in pairs.
  • Correctly name the plural of nouns.
  • Correctly use prepositions.
  • Do not react with hysteria to disappointment or insult.
  • Take care of an animal.
  • Monitor your own hygiene (go to the toilet on your own, use toilet paper, turn on the tap).
  • Eat carefully using a spoon and fork.
  • Help parents with cleaning.
  • Behave with restraint in public.
  • Know some letters.
  • Give your first name, patronymic and last name, as well as your address.
  • Distinguish between living and non-living things.
  • Understand the plot of a cartoon or play.
  • Know the names of animals, plants, professions, household items.
  • Focus on the concepts of right-left-bottom-top.
  • Compare objects by width, height, length, quantity.
  • Color pictures without going beyond the boundaries.
  • Connect dots with a line.
  • String buttons and beads.
  • Know the seasons, phenomena weather, as well as part of the day.
  • Determine the missing item.
  • Retell a fairy tale.
  • Find differences between two images.
  • Put together puzzles of 2-4 elements.
  • Generalize objects into groups.
  • Find identical pairs of objects.
  • Identify extra objects.
  • Know geometric shapes, as well as numbers up to 10.
  • Use scissors.

Height and weight

At four years old, the baby’s weight and height have increased by approximately 2000-2200 grams and 7-8 centimeters, respectively, in comparison to the three-year-old indicators. Doctors and parents compare the baby’s indicators with the norms derived for children of this age category of a certain gender (girls, on average, have lower indicators) to get an idea of the pace at which the child’s physical development is proceeding. The following table displays the average values and normal ranges:

A signpost

Four-year average

Typical boundaries for 4-year-old boys

Typical boundaries for 4-year-old girls

Circumference of the chest

The calculator can be used to determine your child’s norms. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) guidelines for weight and height form the basis of the calculator.

Four-year-olds are bursting with enthusiasm and inquisitiveness as they investigate their surroundings. This phase is essential for the development of their social, linguistic, and problem-solving skills. Four-year-olds start to understand more complicated ideas, play imaginatively, and communicate with their peers more skillfully. Parents and other caregivers can support their child’s development and make sure they are on the right track for future learning and social success by being aware of these developmental milestones.

Types of child development

Physical

At four years old, a child should be able to move freely and develop better coordination, agility, and stamina. This is the aim of the child’s physical development, which includes dancing, gymnastics, swimming, cycling, working out with mom, and a variety of other activities.

It’s crucial to perform gymnastics, especially dynamic exercises, at least twice a week. It is carried out during the day, well in advance of bedtime, in a room with ventilation, and ideally with a group of kids. Such gymnastics should last no more than twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Mental

A four-year-old’semotionalspectrum broadens and their psyche continues to actively develop. Furthermore, children between the ages of 4 and 5 are particularly vulnerable to an adult’s response. A child’s positive self-image is shaped in part by the approval and respect they receive from their parents or other caregivers.

Children’s attention, memory, and thinking skills are all tested in classes for their mental development, which target children between the ages of four and five. The young person is presented with:

  • Generalize objects by some feature.
  • Collect a picture consisting of 3-4 parts.
  • Determine similarities and differences in drawings and toys.
  • Select identical objects from a group.
  • Repeat a certain sequence of movements shown by an adult.
  • Collect buildings from a construction set, focusing on a sample.
  • Determine the odd one out in a group of objects, and then explain your choice.
  • Find antonyms for words.
  • Memorize the plot of a drawing.
  • Retell a fairy tale.
  • Recite nursery rhymes and poems by heart.
  • Describe a bright event that happened recently.

Try practicing memory exercises with your infant by doing the ones outlined in the SovaFilmProduction video below.

Emotional

A four-year-old’semotionaldevelopment is a crucial aspect of their overall development. At this age, a child starts to comprehend interpersonal relationships, can detect changes in the mood of those around them, and can communicate their own feelings.

Four-year-olds are empathetic and attentive. The child senses how he is treated by others.

Sensory and musical

The senses of hearing, smell, and touch are all impacted by a child’s development of their senses. The young person is asked to use touch to ascertain an object’s qualities. In this manner, the infant picks up the concepts of hard and soft, rough and smooth, warm and cold, etc. Games that focus on tastes and smells are also included in the activities for sensory development.

The child is already familiar with a few musical instruments, brief compositions, and various rhythms by the time they are four years old. The infant already has some favorite songs that he or she will sing along to.

Speech

The development of speech is crucial for all 4-year-olds. It is first and foremost impacted by the baby’s interactions with other kids and adults. This helps the baby learn how to form sentences, expand his vocabulary, and verbalize his thoughts. Since many four-year-olds still struggle with pronouncing the "r" and hissing sounds, pronunciation lessons for them frequently take the form of games.

In order to encourage the development of speech in children aged 4-4.5, you can:

  • Teach them poems and songs.
  • Look at pictures with a plot and discuss them.
  • Look at a fairy tale in pictures and reproduce its plot.
  • Read stories with mom and discuss them.
  • Listen to fairy tales on audio.
  • Solve riddles.
  • Discuss how the day went before bed.
  • Do articulation gymnastics.
  • Study letters and sounds.
  • Determine the first letter in a word, divide words into syllables.

With your child, sing the following nursery rhyme from the Lyulyabi TV channel.

When a 4-year-old child struggles to form sentences or has a limited vocabulary, it’s important to evaluate the speech development dynamics of the child. Watch the video by E. Komarovsky for further information.

Fine motor skills

For young children, motor development is regarded as a critical component of their development plan. Activities involving fine motor skills influence the part of the brain that controls speech, which promotes the development of speech. Playing with sand, cubes, construction sets, beads, cereal, and beans is one example of these activities. Exercise your baby’s fingers, tie knots on a cord, zip and unzip jackets, buttons, and hooks. When the child is four years old, incorporate modeling and drawing into your crafts. These require cutting and pasting materials.

Regular cereals can help your child’s fine motor skills develop. View the "Mom"s School" video on the TSV channel to learn how to carry out this kind of activity.

Educational

Since a four-year-old child actively explores his environment, memory, reasoning, attention, and other cognitive skills should all be developed.

Activities aimed at fostering a 4-year-old’scognitivedevelopment typically center around a particular theme, such as "pets," "spring," "water," "land transportation," "professions," "night," and so on. A child can play games based on this theme and learn about colors, shadows, shapes, similarities and differences between elements, pieces of a whole, generalizing properties, unnecessary objects, opposites, missing elements, and much more.

For the development of attention

A child between the ages of four and five should learn how to focus on a particular task and to pay attention to details. In the future, these abilities will be necessary for effective classroom instruction.

A 4-year-old baby’s attention can be developed by providing them with:

  • Repeat actions after mom, for example, sit down – stand up – close your eyes – touch your ear – open your eyes – move your hand to the side.
  • Play with a ball in "edible-inedible", "flying-not flying".
  • Cross out a certain letter in the printed text. To make this task more difficult, one letter can be crossed out and the second one can be underlined.
  • Mom touches parts of the face and names them, the child must repeat her actions. Then mom starts to “make mistakes”.

Mathematical

Learning mathematics should be an engaging and enjoyable game for a 4-year-old child. A baby can easily be taught math concepts while out for a stroll, such as counting steps or recognizing objects like houses, cars, and birds. You can use special counting sticks or your fingers to illustrate basic examples.

Creative

The majority of kids enjoy doing creatively oriented activities. These include role-playing games, modeling with plasticine or salt dough, and making various crafts and applications.

Diagnostics of development

When a child turns four, parents should be informed if the child:

  • Cannot go down the stairs in alternating steps.
  • Does not say his first and last name, as well as his gender.
  • Cannot summarize several objects in one word.
  • Cannot learn a short poem.
  • Cannot remember the plot of a story.
  • Cannot count to 5.
  • Does not know simple geometric shapes.
  • Does not know the primary colors.
  • Cannot build a bridge from blocks using a model.
  • Cannot assemble a pyramid of 5 parts.
  • Shows cruelty to an animal, a toy or another child.
  • Lesser and apathetic during the day, or, on the contrary, often excited.

Games for speech development

  1. Game "what happens". Ask the child what objects can be long, sharp, round, hard, fragrant, blue, liquid, etc.
  2. Game "what happens if". Discuss given situations with the child, for example, "what will happen if a ball falls into the water", "what will happen if I fall into the snow".
  3. Game "what can be done". Ask the child what can be done with an apple, a ball, water, cookies, sand, etc. Another version of this game will be a discussion of "what you can do with" – drink, eat, sew, pour, buy.
  4. Game "what is where". Ask the little one what is in the hallway, in the nursery, in the kitchen. Then ask him to say in which room the frying pan, cabinet, TV, etc. are.
  5. Game "guess who". Describe the animal in a few words and ask the little one to guess. For example, "guess who is fluffy, red and cunning".
  6. Stimulate the pronunciation of hissing sounds. Hiss like a snake, drive away a sparrow "kysh-kysh", pronounce tongue twisters with "sh", buzz like a fly, repeat tongue twisters with "zh", buzz and hiss alternately. So that the child can distinguish "s" from "sh", pronounce them in turn. To distinguish "sh" from "z" imagine yourself as a fly, and then as a mosquito. To pronounce the sound "ch" ask the baby to imagine himself as a train.
  7. Do gymnastics for the tongue and lips. Smile with the soundless pronunciation of “and” (like a frog), pull the lips forward with a soundless “y” (like an elephant), open and close your mouth without sounds (like a fish), open your mouth, move your tongue up and down (like a swing) and in The side to each corner of the mouth (like a clock), hold a relaxed tongue on the lower lip (like a shovel), pull the tongue forward (like a needle).

Use the "Snake" exercise, as demonstrated by speech therapist Julia Orlova, to establish the sound "P."

The child will be able to pronounce the sound more clearly with the aid of articulatory gymnastics. Complete with a small assignment based on the videos that follow, presented by Tatyana Lazareva, a speech therapist.

Children are full of life and curiosity when they are four years old. This is a critical stage where they begin to acquire the necessary skills that will determine their future. They’re displaying a stronger sense of self, increasing curiosity about the world around them, and increasing confidence in their abilities.

Four-year-olds are learning social skills such as sharing and taking turns from their peers. They can communicate their emotions more clearly and take pleasure in playing with friends. Fostering cooperative play and providing avenues for social interaction can aid in the development of these social skills in kids.

This is an excellent age to develop creativity and problem-solving skills intellectually. Kids will start to grasp increasingly difficult ideas and take pleasure in mentally taxing activities. Giving them games, books, and puzzles that are appropriate for their age can help them develop cognitively and ignite their imagination.

Generally, creating a loving atmosphere and participating in meaningful activities with your child are key to fostering their growth at this age. You can contribute to laying the groundwork for their future success and happiness by actively participating in their learning and development.

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Svetlana Kozlova

Family consultant and family relationship specialist. I help parents build trusting relationships with their children and each other. I believe that a healthy atmosphere in the home is the key to happiness and harmony, which I share in articles and recommendations.

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