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Activities by Age: 4 to 5 Years Old

Activities by Age: 4 to 5 Years Old

WIC Playground

Young children ages 4-5 need to be physically active everyday. Participate in activities with your children since the whole family needs plenty of exercise! Make sure both of you get enough fluids to drink. Focus on having fun so that children relate physical activity and exercise with enjoying themselves.

Appropriate activities include running, galloping, jumping, hopping, skipping, tumbling, swimming, and throwing, catching, or kicking a ball. Children can also help with household chores to incorporate physical activity into daily life. They can walk the dog, sweep the floor, rake the leaves, help wash the car, and help in the garden. Below are other ideas for your 4 to 5 year old child.

Developmental Activities

Actions Especially for 4 year olds

Actions Especially for 5 year olds

Other Fun Activities

The U.S. Department of Education and Kathleen Gordon (from www.parenthood.com) have seen success in the activities below. They teach the child new concepts, while also including a lot of fun.

Supporting actions to help your child learn:

Actions Especially for 4 year olds:

Encourage curiosity with planned demonstrations.
Introduce multi-cultural and multi-generational experiences.
Encourage dramatic play.
Provide opportunities to categorize objects.
Teach skills like, mashing boiled egg yolks, rolling cookie dough into balls, peeling hard boiled eggs, peeling carrots, and cracking eggs.
Talk about imagined dangers versus real dangers.
Define unacceptable behavior and introduce a few clear, rules like washing hands before eating.
Tell stories with vivid illustrations and rhyming words.
Match items like lids and jars, bottles and corks and branches and leaves.
Encourage drawing pictures and accompany games and stories with props.
Introduce 12-piece puzzles.
Practice tying shoelaces and buckling shoes.

Actions Especially for 5 year olds:

Visit a bank and start a savings account.
Give child age appropriate chores
Start paying an allowance for special chores above any beyond normal expectations.
Encourage saving with a piggy bank or coin book.
Perform pantomimes, start collections together and play right and left-oriented "Simon Says" games.
Teach simple dance steps, swimming and skating.
Measure cooking ingredients together.
Encourage coordination and balance through hopping and "follow the leader."
Ask "what-if" questions and answer questions.
Provide opportunities to bargain, negotiate and apologize.