This post will start the discussion of 4 to 5 year olds. I hope you have been enjoying these posts on child development and have found them helpful in determining curriculum needs. Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).
We will start with the component - Receptive Language. The learning expectation for this one is: Listens with understanding and interest to conversations, directions, music, and a variety of reading materials. The first performance indicator is: Understands "today." Most children by the time they are 5 years old do understand the concept of today. I am finding that many children struggle with this concept until right before their fifth birthday, but for the most part children these days are actually conquering this one. Some children that have come to me very immature during their fourth year will still struggle with this one into their fifth year. At this point, children without a good foundation will function like developmentally delayed because the amount of information needed to succeed in kindergarten has been elevated from years past. A struggling four year old really needs an extra year in PreK before hitting kindergarten, but I do not know if schools are allowing children to repeat PreK. The number of children repeating kindergarten has been on the rise for many years. Maybe they will come to understand that repeating PreK would be more beneficial for very immature four year olds.
The next performance indicator is: Knows the names and sex of family members. Again, this a performance indicator that most children conquer well before their fifth birthday. In some complicated family relationships, a child might not know the names and sexes of some of his/her family members. In some bitter divorce situations siblings are kept from one another or half-siblings may not know of each other's existence. However, most typically developing children know the names and sexes of those people that constitute their immediate family. Not being able to conquer this one should definitely be a red flag for severe developmental delays.
Next on the list is: Understands the concept of siblings and can name brothers and sisters. For the most part, I am seeing four year olds conquer this one. However, as childcare providers we are running into more and more complex family situations. Many times siblings are only half-siblings. It is not uncommon for a woman to have 3 or 4 children all by different fathers. Sometimes single mothers live together with the children not being siblings at all. The list of variations continues on infinitum. This performance indicator does not necessarily fit the times. All the children presently in my care have divorced families or single mothers that have never been married. It has been a while since I have had a family that fits the traditional family model. Children in these complicated situations do not necessarily truly understand the difference between siblings, half-siblings, and/or children that happen to live in the same house.
The fourth performance indicator is: Knows concept of age (e.g. big brother/oldest brother; baby sister/littlest sister). This performance indicator assumes the child understands superlatives like old, older, oldest. However, this is a far stretch for many four year olds even in family situations. I have a five year old with a half-sister, and I have yet to figure out whether she is younger or older than he is. He has no concept of age in relation to her compared to him. I have another five year old that understands superlatives fairly well, but he really did not make that leap until his fifth birthday. Then I have a three year old that has a fairly decent idea of age and superlatives. Children can vary so widely in skill from the age of 2 years old and upward. Many times this is a concept that must be explained over and over for the children to fully understand. Some children never get that type of instruction. Therefore, they struggle with concepts like this.
The last performance indicator for this post is: Understands the meaning of more prepositions (e.g. "beneath," "between," "below"). The conquering of this particular performance indicator very much depends on a child's level of language development. If a child's language development is lagging, then this performance indicator will not be met. As I have stated before on numerous occasions, I am seeing more and more language development problems with the children that walk through my door. I am also seeing these same problems in the PreK and Headstart classrooms that I read to regularly. Some children with immature language skills do not conquer this before their fifth birthday. Those represent the children most in need of an extra year before kindergarten as I spoke of earlier. School systems around the country are beginning to realize this. I have seen a trend of schools moving back their age cut-off dates to push the median age of their kindergarteners higher. I believe this trend will continue.
I hope you have enjoy this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
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