YOUR CHILD’S SPEECH AND LANGUAGE AT 5

Although there’s a wide range of “average” at this age, here are some developmental markers to look for in a five year old child’s language development:

• Defines objects by their use (You eat with a fork) , color and size

• Knows spatial relations like “on top”, “behind”. “far” and “near”

• Has a sentence length of 5-6 words

• Has a vocabulary of around 2000 words

• Uses all speech sounds with the possible exception of f,v,l,r,th,ch,ch,z

• Knows common opposites like “big/little” and “hard/soft”

• Understands same and different

• Counts ten objects

• Can tell the main idea or theme in a story

• Uses future, present and past tense

• Stays with one activity for around 15 minutes

• Questions for information

• Uses complex sentences like: “I can go in the house after I take off my muddy shoes”.

You can stimulate your child’s speech and language by:

• Encouraging your child to use language to express his feelings, ideas, dreams, wishes and fears

• Continuing to read longer stories

• Encouraging conversations with your child about varied topics