ACTIVITIES TO HELP YOUR 5 YEAR OLD LEARN AND GROW

Children grow so much in the first five years of their lives and parents are always so aware of their children reaching their developmental milestones.   Parents, grandparents and caregivers can contribute daily to helping their children learn and grow.   How your child plays, learns, speaks, acts, and moves offers important clues about your child’s development. Developmental milestones are things most children can do by a certain age.

Basic everyday activities will help your child to learn and reach their full potential.   Talking, singing, playing musical instruments, reading together are just a few ideas to have fun with your child.

Here are a few more ideas:

• Arrange playdates or playgroups with a few friends in your local park.
• Make regular trips to the library and let your child choose their own books.
• Teach your child their home address and phone number. Draw a house on a piece of paper and add a diagram of a phone and let them color it in and memorize the numbers through a song.
• When reading to your child ask them to predict the next event in the story and how they think it will go.
• This is a good time to talk to your child about safe touch. No one should touch private parts except doctors or nurses during an exam or parents when they are trying to keep the child clean.
• Talk about the time concepts: The difference between morning, afternoon and evening and the different activities you do during these times.
• Talk about yesterday, today and tomorrow and relate it to things they have already done and still have to do on those days.
• Explore your local community and places of interest such as the zoo, art museum and play structures.
• Keep a box of art supplies handy such as paper, crayons, paints, child scissors and playdough.   Encourage your child to use these regularly to express themselves in different ways.
• Building blocks and toys that need building are a wonderful challenge for this age group.
• Playgrounds are a great way to learn how to pump their legs to move the swing, slide down the slide and climb up stairs safely.
• Going on walks together is an adventure where you can discuss and talk about how the body moves, what you see on the way, be it bugs or leaves from the changing seasons.
• Get out the bike with training wheels, and helmet and teach your little one how to ride.

These are just a few ideas to get involved with your children as they learn to get ready for the jump to school years.  Have fun and laugh a lot!