What Your 4Year Old Should be Learning
By Beth Robinett
Here are the GUIDELINES that the Kansas State Department of Education has created. These are only GUIDELINES of what a 'typical' 4 year old is learning and mastering. These are not a test of what they have to be able to do in order for them to enter school.
Social Emotional Development
- Describes personal attributes (e.g. name, boy/girl, taller)
- Encourages or praises peers
- Expresses interests, acceptance, affection to others
- Plays with different friends each day
- Follows rules and simple directions
- Takes turns
- Describes situations which can elicit various emotions (e.g. tells a story that is supposed to make listener sad)
- Provides individual and choral/group responses when appropriate. (listens to a story and repeats a line with the group)
- Engages in constructive play (e.g. builds with blocks, makes a snake out of clay)
- Creates and occasionally coordinates play with others.
Cognitive Development
- Attends to a task with minimal adult prompting
- Makes observations and communicates findings with others
- Tries alternative solutions to problems
- Acquires and uses basic vocabulary for plants animals, and humans
- Understands that living things need air, water, and food
- Spontaneously counts for own purposes.
- Demonstrates understanding of 'more' and 'less'.
- Understands that a single object is always 'one'.
- Recognizes whole/part concept with objects (e.g. pizza slices)
- Describes the sequence of daily events
- Recognizes, describes, compares, and names common objects by one or more attribute
- Identifies basic shapes in the environment
- Trades or exchanges materials or objects with others
- Creates representations of familiar places through various materials (building blocks, clay)
- Sings along with others
- Works independently to create own art.
Physical Health and Development
- Balances on one foot
- Hops on one foot
- Steers wheeled toys
- Kicks a large ball
- Cuts out simple shapes
- Eats with a fork and/or spoon
- Transfers food and liquid between containers (e.g. pours juice into a cup from a small pitcher
- Takes care of own toileting needs.
Communication and Literacy Development
- Uses simple pronouns (I, You, We)
- Uses 300+ words
- Asks "who', 'why', and 'where' questions
- Asks for desired objects or assistance
- Answers simple questions dealing with familiar objects or events
- Uses most parts of speech in short, mostly correct sentences, combining four or five words.
- Applies word endings incorrectly (e.g. goed)
- Identifies favorite story(s)
- Makes relevant comments when familiar story is being read
- Recognizes some letter in print
- Recites known nursery rhymes
- Holds a book and looks at one page at a time
- Acts out main events of a familiar story
- Uses pictures to tell and retell a story
- Recognizes labels in the classroom
- Understands that letters are combined to make words
- Writes or draws with separated scribbles, shapes, pictures to convey a story
- Understands that drawings can represent ideas, stories, or events
These guidelines were taken from the Kansas Department of Education's Early learning website
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