Preschool Age

During preschool age, physical growth begins to slow down. It is much slower than it was during infancy. Children at the early childhood stage, children start to become taller and leaner as they mature. They will look more like adults than like infants by the end of early childhood.

“During the ages two to six, children make great strides in the development of gross motor skills, which involves the large muscles used in movement “(Rathus, 2017). At four years old, she has a more complex physical development using both gross and fine motor skills.
She has greater control over large muscles, such as her arms and legs. She is also able to coordinate multiple tasks at the same time, such as singing and building blocks as opposed to when she was a toddler.

She is much more coordinated in her play than the younger children around her. In early childhood, children appear to acquire motor skills by teaching them selves in observing the behavior of other children and adults” (Rathus, 2017, p. 255). Thus, fine motor skills develop more gradually. Fine motor skills are all the small muscles used in manipulation and coordination. Control over the wrist and fingers enable children to, write, dress themselves and in her case the ability to stack blocks.

While observing the child’s use of language, her comprehension and use of words is more sophisticated, she can make sentences and can understand what others are saying. She can talk in clear speech. She is quite self-assured and can understand the concept of conversation. Her language is more mature, her memory and imagination has developed and she is able to think more symbolically.

Children’s language skills develop radically during the preschool years. Between the ages of three and five, egocentric speech starts to disappear. The child’s conversational language starts to show sensitivity to the listener, for example, the subject was taking turns talking and listening to her fellow classmates.

By that age of four years old, some milestones children develop are the ability to ask adults and each other questions, taking turns talking, and partaking in longer conversations. “They have vocabulary of 1500-1600 words. They’re speech is fluent and their articulation is also good. Children can use five or six words in sentences and can now coordinate two sentences together” (Rathus, 2017 p. 301).