Your 4-year-old no longer seems like a toddler. Because of their growing speech and intellect, preschoolers look more independent. A child’s development can be found in how they play, learn, speak, act, and move. Most kids (75 percent or more) reach developmental milestones by a specific age. Although, it is not the same for every child.
Pre-primary classes are crucial for a child’s development in all domains, including social, cognitive, language, physical, and adaptive.
When they start pre-primary classes, most kids are at least three years old. They stay in preschool for about two years before starting kindergarten. This article will cover the skills about a child’s development during pre-primary classes and how parents can help in their children’s growth at the best CBSE school in Warangal.
Core development signs at age 4
A year makes all the difference! Your four-year-old now attends pre-primary classes and is not a toddler anymore. Many parents like you are curious about essential skills for a 4-year-old child before starting kindergarten.
You can read about four-year-olds’ developmental milestones below, even though each child’s learning develops at their own pace.
Cognitive skills
Your child can hold better conversations now since they are naturally curious. At age four, your child’s vocabulary and cognitive skills have increased. Your child should be able to perform tasks more effectively and respond to basic questions easily with logic.
At this age, most kids like to sing, rhyme, and create new words and participate in preschool activities. They are vibrant, goofy, and occasionally noisy.
Other signs include:
- Identify new colors and finish a story on their own while playing preschool games.
- Describes human beings’s three or more body parts during preschool activities.
- Possess a longer attention span while attending pre-primary classes.
- Follow long instructions, like “Put your book away, brush your teeth, and then get in bed.”
- Know the meaning of important signs, like “STOP.” If instructed well, learn their address and phone number.
- Recognize everyday items like food and money and more.
Introducing preschool activities such as story sequencing and color-matching tasks can help children build the skills.
Language and communication skills
Between the ages of 4 and 5, children can follow increasingly complicated instructions and tell you everything they do at their preschool classes. They can retell, listen, make up stories, and predict what will happen next.
Their vocabulary keeps expanding, and their sentences contain four or more words. While some developmental sound errors, such as stuttering and lisping, are present, speech should be entirely understandable.
Other signs include:
- Form a sentence with more than four-words.
- Enact a few lines from a nursery rhyme, song, or tale at their pre-primary classes.
- Explain events from their day, such as “I played soccer at preschool games today.”
- Answer basic questions, like “What is a coat for?” and “What is a crayon for?”
- Communicate when they are hungry or hurt
Including preschool activities like singing, rhyming, and storytelling will increase children learning naturally.
Social and emotional skills
At age 4, your child is learning that it’s not always about them. At this age, children notice the emotions of others. Your 4 to 5-year-old should be more adept at handling disagreements, managing their feelings, and understanding the results of their actions.
Your child also shows the following social and emotional developmental milestones at this age:
- Become more attentive of their surroundings.
- Can replicate instructions without understanding whether good or bad.
- They enjoy playing with other kids and befriending during preschool activities.
- Start having independent thoughts, like “I want to sketch a butterfly”.
- Understands the rules of games during preschool activities and partakes in sharing and taking turns.
- Signs of independence and being verbal rather than physically expressing anger.
Use preschool games to teach empathy, cooperation, and sharing. These are important for kids’ education and moral values.
Physical and motor skills
At this age, children are learning how to jump forward, hop, and skip at preschool games. They are excited to show off their one-footed balancing, ball-catching, and somersaulting abilities.
Preschoolers and kindergarteners like dancing, swimming, playing on a playground, and riding a tricycle or training-wheeled bicycle under parental supervision. DPS Warangal, the best CBSE school in Warangal, has all these facilities to make preschool games interesting for your child.
Other movements they have developed by four year old are:
- Hold a pencil or crayon between the thumb and fingers instead of a fist.
- Hop and somersault.
- Climb and descend stairs on your own.
- Move with ease both forward and backward.
- Tricycle pedaling.
- Make a copy of a square, triangle, circle, and other shapes at pre-primary classes.
- Children learning to sketch a human being with a body.
- Put ten or more blocks in a stack.
- Make use of a spoon and fork.
- Without much assistance, get dressed and undress, brush your teeth, and use the restroom.
Make preschool games like hopscotch or balance-beam walking part of your kid’s daily preschool activities to have better motor skills.
How to teach a 4-year-old at home
Play and interactive conversation help in children learning more. Reading books, singing, playing word games, and just talking to you can expand their vocabulary and improve their listening skills. At DPS Warangal, we do everything to take care of your ward like ours.
As your child’s first teacher, you can support children’s learning and brain development. Try these easy exercises and suggestions securely. If you have questions or want more tips on supporting your child’s development, speak with your child’s physician and teachers. Help your child prepare for new situations and preschool activities.
- Read stories to your child or pretend play.
- Help your children learn about sizes, shapes, and colors. You can ask them about the size, color, and shape they sew throughout the day.
- Give them lots of time to run around and play.
- Assign your child small household tasks and indulge with them.
- Let your child decide which activity they want to partake in with friends.
- Ask questions like “What do you think happens next?” when telling them a story.
- Indulge in letter writing, drawing, and projects involving glue, scissors, and other art supplies.
- Ask your child about their worries, likes, dislikes, and what they did with friends today.
- Help your child learn how to control intense emotions, such as anger.
These are some of the essential skills for a 4-year-old child to develop during this stage. Use these tips if you’re wondering how to teach a 4-year-old at home with ease.
When to call your child’s doctor
The checkpoints listed above can give you a general idea of the changes you can expect as your child ages. However, if their development takes a slightly different turn, don’t worry. The DPS Warangal provides you a specialist who can take care of your child’s needs.
However, if your child shows signs of a possible developmental delay for this age group, speak with your pediatrician.
- Incapable of throwing a ball or following instructions during preschool games.
- Not being able to jump at a position.
- Cannot stack four blocks, and has difficulty writing.
- They still cling to or weep when their parents drop them to school.
- Playing with other toddlers doesn’t excite them.
- Does not respond to non-family members.
- Refuses to sleep, dress, or go to the bathroom on their own.
- When angry or upset, they lose all self-control and lash out.
- Not able to duplicate a circle or other basic shapes.
- Uses sentences of no more than three words.
- Can’t differentiate pronouns like “me”, “you”, “her”, and “his”.
Engaging in preschool games and regular preschool activities can bring out where support is needed in children’s learning.
You can play various games and activities with your children to help them develop early literacy and numeracy skills. The activities include speaking and listening, vocabulary building, and counting while making the process fun. These sync with essential skills for a 4-year-old child and support better kids’ education outcomes.
Since every child develops differently, it is impossible to predict when or how they will own up a particular skill. But with regularity, parents can get better at how to teach a 4-year-old at home smoothly.