At Four Years, Your Child will Likely…

Physical Development:

• Stand on one leg.
• Jump up and down.
• Draw a circle and a cross.
• Be self-sufficient in many routines of home life.
• Skip on one foot.
• Cut with scissors (not well.)
• Be able to wash and dry his face.
• Dress himself (except ties.)
• Be able to do a standing broad jump.
• Throw balls overhand.
• Have a high motor drive.
• Draw simple circles and stick figure people.
• Climb up and down a slide by himself.
• Use the toilet with just a little help.

Social & Emotional Development:

• Share possessions.
• Try to react socially.
• Make uninvited comments to others sometimes.
• Enjoy sharing.
• Cooperate in play with other children, and at nursery school.
• Imitate parents.
• Begin to identify with same-sex parent and practice sex-role activities.
• Have an intense curiosity and interest in other children's bodies.
• Have an imaginary friend.
• Be affectionate toward parents.
• Have a romantic attachment to the parent of opposite sex (3 to 5 yrs.)
• Be jealous of the same-sex parent.
• Have imaginary fears of the dark, injury, etc. (3 to 5 years.)
• Like to conform.
• Have an easy going attitude.
• Be less resistant to change than in previous years.
• Seem more secure.
• Have a greater sense of personal identity.
• Begin to be adventuresome.
• Enjoy music.

Intellectual Development:

• Have good memory and capacity recall.
• Ask endless questions.
• Be learning to generalize.
• Be highly imaginative.
• Be dramatic.
• Draw recognizable simple objects.
• Match and name three or four colors.
• Put together simple puzzles with 5 or 6 pieces.
• Follow simple two step directions.
• Use complete sentences.
• Have a vocabulary of about 1540 words.
• Know the names of familiar animals.
• Be able to use at least four prepositions (or demonstrate that he understands. their meanings when given commands, like “Look under the table!”)
• Be able to name common objects in picture books or magazines.
• Know one or more colors.
• Be able to repeat 4 digits when they are given slowly.
• Be able to repeat words of four syllables (most of the time.)
• Have most vowel sounds (including sounds like “ow” and “oy”) and have the consonants p, b, m, w, n well established.
• Indulge in make-believe often.
• Be talkative when carrying out activities.
• Understand concepts like longer and larger when a contrast is presented.
• Follow simple commands even when the commands involve objects that are not in sight.
• Repeat words, phrases, syllables, and even sounds often.
• Talk with words in sentences that can mostly be understood (about 75% of what he says.)

Delevopmental milestones associated with feeding:

• Rarely spills when using spoon.
• Serves self finger foods.
• Eats with fork held with fingers.
• Uses fork in preference to spoon.

First Connections with Families
First Connections with Families provides information about child development, reading to your child, and child health and safety.

The Early Learning Guidelines
This exciting new resource is being written to assist early childhood caregivers/teachers, parents and other adults with information about supporting the learning and development of young children. The Guidelines provide information related to seven domains or areas of learning and development:

• Social & Emotional Developmentment
• Approaches to Learning
• Health & Physical Development
• Language & Literacy Development
• Mathematics
• Science
• Creative Arts