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Now we are 4 years old! Development & what to expect

Development & Psychology aged 4 - what can we expect?

Well, time keeps galloping along. Happy birthday to my little lovely! Not so little now…

What has happened in the last year? Well, we’re still at preschool, we’ve made little preschool friends, he’s mastered the potty for day and night and use of the “big toilet” while we’re out and for most of the time at home too. He’s engaging in a lot of small world play, Lego, creative thinking, can write most of his name, recognises all the letters of the alphabet, put on his shoes oh and probably more things I can’t think of right now to list…
But anyway, what does the literature indicate about typical 4 year old development? Here’s some info from Talking Point:

By age 4 children will usually

Development & Psychology aged 4 - what can we expect?:

  • Be able to listen to longer stories and answer questions about the story
  • Like simple jokes (in our household, he is developing lots of humour around farts and the word “bum” – great)
  • Ask questions using the words what, why and where
  • Describe things that have happened in the past, e.g. we went to the shop
    • 3 and 4 year olds can probably form episodic memories (the ability to reflect on our past, and consider things that haven’t taken place yet – the future). Some research shows that 4 year olds can hold onto these memories for longer than 3 year olds who, in this research study could only hold onto the memories for a short amount of time (15 minutes) (Scarf et al, 2013)

In the next year, by age 5 we can expect a child to usually:

  • Be able to take turns in longer conversations
  • Understand words that describe a sequence such as “first we will go to the playground, then we need to go to the shops”
  • Socially, choose friends and those they play with
And so what did we get up to on our birthday?
Well it was the middle of the week so no big party on the actual day. We went to see a theatre show (fancy) called Stick Man (based on the book) – fun times at the LEGO STORE Leicester square, then for chips and milkshake at Shake Shack, and then home for birthday cake. I think he had fun…
  1. Scarf D., Gross J., Colombo M., Hayne H. (2013). To have and to hold: episodic memory in 3- and 4-year-old childrenDev. Psychobiol. 55, 125–132

Happy Birthday Baby! Now we are one



now we are one, happy birthday baby, baby-brain.co.uk. (Baby's first birthday)

Now We Are One

Now we are one. I can’t believe how quickly it’s all gone. This time last year he was only a few hours old. I had no idea how much things were going to change after that. We had a great day today. Friends and family came round for a little party. Nothing too big and fancy. Had a cake, some food, some fun. It was loosely Caterpillar themed, based on our experiences of reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and that being something the Little Lovely might recognise.

 

We are going to continue the celebration tomorrow with a “birthday twin” friend who was born on the same day as LL, and her parents.

 

Time has flown. Back at work. Need to enjoy my free time with LL. Soon I’ll be writing a post or something on facebook and saying “now we are 10”, or something. Too fast.

 

now we are one, happy birthday baby, baby-brain.co.uk

First birthday mix

 

Our caterpillar themed cake complete with 1 candle! He couldn’t blow it out but we still did the whole happy birthday song to him. He pointed at the cake while we sang.

 

now we are one, happy birthday baby, baby-brain.co.uk

Birthday caterpillar cake

 

I tried to make some grape caterpillars by threading green and red grapes onto a cake pop stick. I avoided anything too sharp and spiky; the cake pop stick seemed good and no small children managed to poke themselves with it. Not everyone could tell they were supposed to be caterpillars though! Mainly the mothers could tell. Oh well. I was going to put icing sugar eyes on and little antennae made of carrot, but ran out of preparation time this morning. Here they are eating some paper fruit, a la The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
now we are one, happy birthday baby, baby-brain.co.uk

Grape caterpillars trying to get at some fruit

 

Look at that lovely spread!
now we are one, happy birthday baby, baby-brain.co.uk

Food spread

Decorations up. LL was quite interested in all the sparkly things hanging around the house.
now we are one, happy birthday baby, baby-brain.co.uk

First birthday decorations