4 and 5 year olds: how you can help me with my learning

Communication and Language

  • Play games with me where I have to listen to your instructions such as a treasure hunt
  • Share a wide range of books and stories with me, including non-fiction and poetry
  • Talk out aloud, commenting on your actions and mine. This helps me hear clear, well-formed sentences
  • Encourage me to have lots of back and forth conversations with other children and adults

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

  • Listen carefully to me. Encourage me to express my feelings using words
  • Help me solve problems by talking them through with me. This will help me keep going even when I find it really hard

Physical Development

  • Give me time and space to be highly active and get out of breath every day
  • Encourage me to crawl on all fours, climb, pull myself up on a rope and hang on monkey bars. These activities will help me develop the strength I need for writing
  • Let me use one-handed tools like peelers and knives

Mathematics

  • Name small groups of things, this helps me to ‘subitise’ (instantly seeing how many without counting) e.g. “There are 3 slices of pizza left”
  • Ask me to count out a number of things from a group, e.g. “Could you get me 6 eggs?”
  • Make number snap or bingo with numerals and pictures. Match the numerals with the right amount
  • Make patterns with objects, e.g. buttons or shells. Such as ‘big, small, big…’ Make a mistake and talk with me about how to fix it

Literacy

  • Keep reading with me everyday. Share books that let me see people of different races, cultures, gender and religion
  • Play games where you give me an instruction like “Can you h-o-p?” I have to put the sounds of the word together
  • Let me make up stories – you could write them down for me and we could act them out
  • Make a photo book of our family or when we went to the park and let me write my own words in it

Understanding the World

  • Share photos and tell stories about my family, both past and present
  • Take me to places of worship and places of local importance in my community
  • Let me help you cook. Talk about changes such as ‘melting’ or ‘boiling’

Expressive Arts and Design

  • Sing and dance with me when we hear our favourite songs. Encourage me to make up my own routine
  • Give me string, scissors, glue, sticky tape and boxes to make a model