A child's leisure time should be useful and interesting, but the problem is that not all parents can or want to make it just that way. In fact, four-year-old children require more attention than even infants. On the one hand, they no longer need to regularly warm up bottles of food and change diapers, but on the other hand, they need to be constantly engaged and played with. Without this, the full development of the child and the establishment of trusting, close relationships between the child and parents are unthinkable.
The baby is still full of energy and strength in the first half of the day, so it is better to conduct training sessions at this time. These include decorating pictures, modeling from plasticine, working with appliqués, and cutting out simple figures. To keep your child interested in the process, you need to approach it creatively and come up with original tasks. Ingenuity and imagination can be perfectly developed with the help of pyramids, puzzles, construction sets and other “collective” toys. Although it will be interesting for the baby to assemble something with his own hands, the participation of mom or dad will make this process much more fun.
Children at the age of 4 already begin to realize their gender identity. The girl strives to copy her mother’s behavior, and the boy probably wants to become as strong as his father. Thanks to this age-related feature, role-playing games open up an inexhaustible source of entertainment for kids. There are a huge number of them: a store, a hospital, daughters and mothers, a hairdresser, a game of builders. With the help of such variety, you can captivate even a 4-year-old hyperactive child.

Drawing

Not all boys are drawn to drawing, but even such boys may certainly be interested in drawing with charcoal. First you need to take care of your workspace so that the whole apartment doesn’t turn black. Another option is to offer the baby whatman paper and paints and let him draw on it - either with his hands or with his feet.
Girls at 4 years old can draw quite well, both with pencils and felt-tip pens, and with paints. Even if a child does not like to draw too much, then if you give him a piece of old wallpaper, a large brush and paints, he will certainly become interested in this activity.
There are other exciting options:

• Previously, stencils were produced for drawing numbers, letters or geometric shapes, which were often used when designing, for example, school wall newspapers. They can serve well when working with 4-year-old children. You can trace various shapes using them and then color them. You can do it differently - download letters, geometric shapes or animal figures from the Internet, print them, transfer them to cardboard, cut them out - and you’ll get a wonderful stencil.
• You can show your child how to draw the outline of your hand on paper.. He will probably be interested in this process, so he will switch to it for a long time - if only there was blank paper!
• Using carbon paper. Not long ago there were no photocopiers, and people used carbon copies instead. Now, of course, such a rarity is difficult to find, but if it is possible, it will be a great joy for the child, as soon as he is shown how to use it correctly.
• Everyone knows how important it is to develop fine motor skills in children., and such skills can be perfectly developed through drawing. You can combine this with a trick: put a coin under a sheet of paper and start shading the paper with a pencil on top. All the details depicted on the coin will immediately appear, which can then be cut out and used as “paper money”.
• The simplest option is to download coloring pages from the Internet and invite the child to bring them “to condition” with the help of paints. You can also download all kinds of labyrinths from the Internet.
• Method of drawing by points It will be especially attractive to children for whom drawing is difficult. Here they only need to connect the dots until they get the correct drawing.

Useful literature for 4 year olds

It is important for parents to instill in their child the basics of social behavior from a young age. For this purpose, it is best to choose educational books. At the age of 4, a child learns to contact the world, so it is advisable that he does this correctly from the beginning.
You can start with books containing instructive stories with a conclusion at the end of each. Using the example of book characters, the child will get acquainted with the wisdom of life: how to behave with peers, with adults, how to make acquaintances, what to be wary of, here he will learn the rules of behavior in kindergarten. An important educational point in such books is the emphasis on morality in each plot.
When choosing poems for 4-year-old children, it is important to pay attention to the authors. Samuel Marshak and Korney Chukovsky wrote excellent poems for such children. They will be interested in the story of the Kid and Carlson or the adventures of the heroes from Prostokvashino, as well as folk tales from different countries. After each story or poem read, it is important to analyze what was read together and make sure that the child understood it.
At school, the ability to clearly formulate his opinion will greatly help him.

You need to notice which fairy tales your child likes best, and then select similar ones. It is desirable that there be more illustrations - it will be more interesting for the child, and he will remember more, since visual information is easier for him to assimilate.

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Educational programs and cartoons on the tablet A modern way to entertain a child is to turn on educational programs or cartoons on his tablet. Now there are special channels showing educational cartoons. It is only important to choose the right program appropriate for the child’s age. But you need to remember that playing for a long time with a tablet or watching TV distracts children’s attention, can disrupt the baby’s sleep and cause aggressive behavior.
Therefore, a cartoon session should not last more than 15-20 minutes. Unfortunately, many modern cartoons are sloppy and contain a lot of violence, so adults need to check them first before showing them to a 4-year-old child. In this regard, kind and instructive Soviet cartoons are ideal. They emphasize the value of kindness and friendship, the desire to help loved ones, and they teach to look for positive moments in any situation. After all, Disney has very good cartoons for 4-year-olds (especially the old ones)
. They always have beautiful graphics, bright characters, and a lot of simple, catchy music and songs.

Those who want their child to know a foreign language can use online games to learn a language.

Many 4-year-old toddlers are happy to help their mother in the kitchen, and they should not be denied this. After all, even for their clumsy fingers, you can always find something feasible to do here: cut ripe bananas with a dull table knife (not a sharp kitchen knife), wash apples in a basin, beat eggs for an omelet, roll out and knead the dough (at least try it). But, having handed the child even seemingly safe kitchen utensils, parents should closely monitor him, not leaving the baby alone.
Moreover, you should not leave your child near a boiling pan; such negligence can be too expensive! Not every mother will trust her 4-year-old child with cooking, but she should just allow him to play next to him! You can give your baby a saucepan, a spoon, a plastic plate and let him “cook dinner”
. At this age, children are incredibly fascinated by role-playing games. Using the same scenario, you can organize other activities: clearing dishes from the table in a playful way, sorting clean things in the closet - if only mom had enough imagination! If the baby is interested, he can be involved in homework.

The girl will act as her mother’s main assistant, and the boy will become his father’s irreplaceable, dexterous and strong apprentice, without whom he, of course, cannot cope. It would hardly be wise to trust a 4-year-old to wash mirrors or vacuum cleaner, but he is quite capable of sorting socks, putting away his toys, or dusting the bottom shelves.

Creative activities

Collage of cereals

You can easily interest your baby in an unusual and exciting activity: make a three-dimensional toy or collage, decorated in a “kitchen style” with beans, pasta, bottle caps, etc. The basis can be a sheet of colored cardboard, onto which the baby can glue PVA glue in a certain sequence figures or landscape elements. Using a similar principle, you can make voluminous toys, but then the cardboard figure will have to be cut out.

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Origami

The girls are good at cutting out simple figures from paper. Many people like to fold origami, although parents must first show their daughter how to do it. You can cut out various figures from colored paper or newspaper, give the baby a glue stick - let her make appliqués.

Modern plasticine is an excellent tool for organizing exciting children's leisure time. It is soft, has many colors and shades. This plasticine does not need to be crushed in your hands for a long time. There is also floating plasticine containing foam balls. You can even take boats and other crafts from it with you to the bath.
If a child willingly plays with plasticine, but is not interested in modeling from it, then for such a child you can roll multi-colored sausages from it and invite him to cut them with a plastic plasticine knife.

Puzzles and mosaics

Puzzles also have an excellent developmental effect on logical thinking and attention. For a child, it is better to buy a bright puzzle with the image of a fairy-tale character, so that it is easier and more interesting for him to assemble it.
Some kids can be captivated by mosaics for hours, while others will get bored within 10 minutes. In any case, it’s worth trying, so it won’t hurt at home.

Fun with a hole punch

If you offer your baby a stack of old magazines and a hole punch, he will begin to punch the paper with interest. But you will have to watch the baby with a hole punch in his hands so that it does not transfer from the paper to the tissues surrounding him.

Toys

At 4 years old, boys love to play with construction sets, cars, robots, soldiers, and build towns, garages and roads. It is better to buy several different sets so that the baby can show his imagination, develop thinking, imagination and creativity.

Kinetic sand

If parents are too busy, they can let their child play with kinetic sand, which will distract him for a long time.

Active fun

Tennis for children

To develop your baby's coordination of movements, it is useful to buy him a small tennis racket with a ball tied to a string. The toy is very compact, and the ball will not fly far.

Home wigwam

Make a “house” out of pillows and blankets and throw your baby in there with a flashlight - such a “cave” will surely delight him.

Stickers

You can buy a pack of children's stickers in the store and show your child how they can be pasted into a notebook or album. True, starting with a notebook, children usually get so carried away that they begin to cover everything: furniture, mirrors, walls.

Magnifier

If there is a magnifying glass in the house, then you can show it to the child and demonstrate its effect. The baby will begin to look at a wide variety of objects with great interest.

Through developmental activities with children 4-5 years old, you can master the alphabet and mathematics. The main thing is that homeschooling brings pleasure to the child.

Primary school teachers are well aware that young students come to school with completely different levels of preparation. And the better it is, the more confident the child feels in class, and the faster and easier the material is learned. However, you won’t be able to prepare well for school quickly. Even from kindergarten, with the help of games, it is necessary to develop the thinking processes of children, and later, through developmental activities with children already 4-5 years old, you can master the basics of literacy and mathematics.

Any parent can handle the preparation of a future schoolchild; the main thing is to know what knowledge and skills to teach at 4-5 years old, and how to turn home schooling into a “system.”

Program and planning of developmental activities

It’s good when every game, every walk turns into a developing activity. However, in such “spontaneous” learning, something can be missed, so everyone, even non-professional teachers, needs a clear lesson program.

It’s better to plan a week in advance. This way, the parent will be able to prepare some materials for lessons in advance, and will understand which tasks take the child a lot of time and which come too easily.

Thematic material:

As in kindergarten, daily classes with the child should be carried out in the following areas:

• speech development and literacy training;
• mathematics and logic;
• creativity - modeling, drawing, design, appliqué;
• physical development (this means a separate 20-40-minute lesson, dynamic pauses are present in each lesson once every 15 minutes);
• broadening one’s horizons – ecology, rules of etiquette, safety, etc.;
• fiction.

All these subjects should be evenly distributed in the program for the week, depending on the child’s capabilities.

Teaching literacy is taught to a preschooler only when he himself is interested in it. To learn how to understand that your baby is ready to learn letters, read the article Learning to read: where to start and how to teach how to add syllables.

A plan for developmental activities for 4-5 year old children at home could be something like this.

It is not for nothing that this planning includes daily physical education and creativity classes. It is extremely important for a growing body to splash out energy and develop coordination of movements. Well, creativity helps develop fine motor skills and develops imagination.

It is unlikely that it will be possible to include all subjects in one day. A 4-year-old child still gets tired quickly and can only do one activity for no more than 15-20 minutes.

The number of developmental activities in the program depends not only on the child’s abilities, but also on whether he attends a kindergarten or a development center. If teachers are working with a preschooler, parents can allocate only a little time for home lessons in the evenings and on weekends.

In such lessons it is good to include the material that the child studied in the institution. Repetition will allow you to consolidate the acquired knowledge and skills.

What tasks are suitable for children 4-5 years old?

In the article: “” it has already been written about what a preschool child should know at the age of 4. Now you need to work on the same skills, deepening your knowledge and complicating tasks. A small list of what a baby will learn in the fifth year:

1. use of prepositions;
2. orientation in space (know left/right, etc.);
3. understand where “more”, “equally” or “less”;
4. use nouns according to numbers;
5. Count to 10, to 5 - in reverse order.
6. draw lines without lifting the pencil from the paper, etc.

If your preschooler is already coping with this, don’t stand still and deepen your knowledge. However, all classes should be interesting to him, otherwise excessive workload will only discourage him from studying for a long time.

Developmental aids 4+

Now about the tasks themselves. For children 4 years old you can find many printed publications, the exercises of which will not only help fill the lessons themselves, but will also tell you in which direction to move.

The most popular are the series of manuals by O.N. Zemtsova “Smart Books”, as well as the publication “School of the Seven Dwarfs”. Such textbooks contain tasks for the development of logical thinking, attention, plot pictures, games with stickers, and much more. etc.

An example of an illustration with tasks in mathematics and logic from the “Literacy” series.

For children 4 years old, the first copybooks are also suitable. By tracing simple patterns along the dots, children prepare their hands for writing. An example from the School of the Seven Dwarfs.

Reading ABCs and math books

If the baby is willing to study and is successful, the main subjects - literacy and mathematics - can be studied using real textbooks.

For teaching reading, Zhukova’s “Primer” is considered one of the best, where it clearly shows how letters merge into syllables, and the methodology itself corresponds to school curricula.

Thematic material:

The Buneevs’ technique is also popular. At the age of four, the authors offer children the guide “On the Road to the ABCs.”

Also, primary school teachers highly value textbooks on mathematics by L.G. Peterson. For preschoolers there is an age-appropriate textbook called “Igrachka”. With it, already at the age of 4, a child will learn all the necessary topics in a playful way.

Tasks in pictures

In addition to manuals, you can use printed pictures with exercises during classes.

Studying right and left

To help your child quickly remember which hand is right and which is left, you can use a poster like this with palms.

Pictures in which you need to circle the images with the desired direction will also help.

Mathematics

Coloring pages in which you need to connect the dots in order will help you consolidate your knowledge of the number series.

And such mathematical material will teach you how to correlate quantity with number.

Speech development

Based on the pictures, you can answer questions and write short stories.

Logics

To develop logical thinking, you can prepare the game “Find a Pair”.

Or finish a logical series.

Pictures for a lesson about space

A home lesson can also be thematic. After familiarizing yourself with the topic “Space,” you can offer your child various games to develop thinking processes.

Exercises and games

At four years old, all exercises should be of a playful nature only. Otherwise, the baby will quickly get tired and lose interest in learning.

For example, to develop memory, draw a grid with large cells on paper. Then, together with the baby, place several small toys in square houses. When the child turns away, move the objects to other cells. Invite your preschooler to return them to their places.

The “Book Detective” exercise will help consolidate knowledge of letters and the ability to isolate the first sound in a word. Assignment: guess a letter and ask you to find an object or picture in a book for a given letter. With several children you can play for speed. You can complicate the exercise with a task, find words with two letters or with a letter at the end.

Another game for literacy lessons. Glue cards with letters to objects in the room so that their names begin with that letter. The baby's task is to find which letters are attached incorrectly and correct it.

It’s good when parents are seriously involved in the development and education of their preschool children. However, you should not turn homework into a chore for your child or a chore. The child should enjoy the learning process and look forward to each lesson.

Children at 4 years old are real tomboys. But unlike one-year-old babies, who are interested in literally everything around them, older children approach their leisure time more consciously. If you are one of those conscious parents who are worried about what to do with a 4-year-old child besides the TV and tablet, this article is for you. In it you will find the most accessible ways for every mother to organize leisure time.

Properly organized leisure time for a child is not only the key to his timely development, but also the ability of the parent to interact with the child in a format that is interesting to him. What to do with a 4 year old child? What should be useful games and activities for a child aged 4 years?

Features of age

Let's consider the basics of age-related developmental characteristics characteristic of 4-year-old children:

• The most preferred activity is play.
• Active physical development (dexterity, flexibility, coordination).
• Expansion of cognitive skills (obtaining information about the features of the surrounding world).
• Enrichment of vocabulary.
• Formation of correct sound pronunciation.
• Pronounced creative development.
• The development of imagination, which can manifest itself in the child’s personal experiments.

What to do with children at home?

According to pediatricians, 4-year-old children are receptive to any information coming to them through the auditory, visual and sensory channels. Simply put, everything that a child hears, sees and can hold in his hands will be interesting to him. Therefore, games can be composed in a certain complex, which will not only help entertain the child, but will also stimulate his development in an understandable play environment.

1. Children aged four, especially girls, often draw. Therefore, sometimes it is enough to give the child an album and many, many pencils, paints and markers. If the child does not really like to draw, then you can offer him paints, a thick brush and give him a large piece of old wallpaper. No child will refuse such a scale.
2. Give your child a hole punch or stapler and a couple of old magazines, he will be happy to make holes. In this case, it is better to seat the child not far from you so that he does not rip holes in your curtains while you are busy.
3. Cut with scissors. You can give an old magazine or the same wallpaper. Children will be happy to cut up mountains of garbage for you. At the age of 4, many can already cut out geometric shapes - show how to cut out a triangle, circle and square. Let them try to repeat it using colored paper, and then together they can make appliqués.
4. I still have stencils of letters, numbers and geometric shapes from my childhood. Remember, they used to sign wall newspapers. Now they are helping me out well. They can be traced and colored. If you don’t have these, you can download letters, shapes, animals from the Internet - cut them out on cardboard and the stencil is ready.
5. Modeling from plasticine. At the age of 4-5 years, children enjoy modeling from plasticine.
6. Playing with clothespins is more suitable for children 2-3 years old. But you can diversify this game. Pull the rope not high from the floor, give the child some small rags and let him hang out the laundry.
7. You can outline your arms and legs. One day I gave my child a blank notebook and showed him how to draw his hand. For half an hour the child was not visible... then he brought me a notebook, all the sheets in it were with outlines of hands.
8. Drawing using carbon paper. Previously, there were carbon copies and no photocopier.
9. Since it is very important for preschoolers to develop fine motor skills, a lot of my activities involve drawing. Let's outline the money. Place the coin under the paper and color it in with a pencil. You get paper money.
10. A house made of pillows and blankets, you can put a flashlight inside.
11. We have kinetic sand, which also helps in cases where parents are overly busy.
12. Children's stickers are sold in stores; buy a pack and show them how to stick them in an album or notebook. But usually children are not limited to just a notebook, so there is a chance that stickers will end up on mirrors, cabinets and wallpaper.
13. Glue with tape. Give me a small piece of tape and show me how to use it. You can allow your child to hang his drawings on tape on the door.
14. Sharpen pencils with a regular sharpener.
15. Coloring pages. I download from the Internet those that the child chooses and let them color.
16. Labyrinths. I also print out mazes from the Internet.
17. Drawing by points. Perfect for those who are bad at drawing, connecting the dots creates a drawing.
18. I have an old phone, but in working condition. The child loves to take pictures or video himself using the front camera. This activity fascinates him for a long time. He records himself reading poetry, singing songs, filming reports - very funny. Recently I also taught him how to delete the photos he took so that the space on his phone doesn’t fill up.
19. You can prepare the applique in advance and give your child an album and glue. It is better to give a glue stick or PVA, but pour it into a separate jar and give it a brush.
20. Piggy bank with coins. Coins can be loaded into a piggy bank or a truck.
21. A box with different buttons. You just need to suggest it, and the children themselves will figure out how to play with it.
22. If you have a skein of old yarn, give it to your child. You won’t be able to collect the threads in a row :), but you are guaranteed silence for half an hour.
23. Magnifier. Show her how to look at objects.
24. Mosaic. Sometimes a child can do mosaics for a long time, and sometimes 2 minutes is not enough. But if you don’t have it, it’s better to buy it, sometimes it really helps.

What to do with a child outside

If you are puzzled by what to do with a 4-year-old child outdoors that is beneficial for him and comfortable for you, take into account the following tips:

• Ask your child to talk about the flowers he sees: what color the petals are, how many there are, whether the flower is large or small. At home, together with your child, draw what you saw on the street.
• Feed homeless animals and pigeons. Interaction with animals causes genuine delight for most children.
• Games with soap bubbles develop dexterity and coordination.
• In the fall, you can take a walk to the park and pick up beautiful leaves, chestnuts, and pine cones, from which you can make original crafts.

You can organize themed walks for each time of year. For example, with the arrival of spring or autumn, you can go to the park to collect signs of the coming warmth or, conversely, the approaching cold weather.

Mini football

This is a wonderful, exciting game for fidgets. So, we find a small lawn without holes, bushes and hillocks. Using pins or ordinary stones we make a symbolic gate. The goal of the game is to score as many goals as possible into the opponent's goal. If you involve fans in the game, it will be a lot of fun.

Sandbox

And, of course, don’t forget about the good old sand, in which all the kids love to play. You can build incredible towers and caves from it, and you can use molds to make interesting figures. Let's start with the most basic games:

• The child walks through the sand first with each finger, and then leaves a mark on it with all five.
• He scoops up a small amount of sand, closes his fist, but leaves a small gap between his palm and fingers, from which sand will pour out in a trickle.
• Rub the sand between your palms.

Be sure to tell your child about the rules of playing with sand: you cannot throw it at other people and you must wash your hands after playing with sand.

The best games in the country

In the warm season, it is difficult to think of a more useful place for a child than a country house. Here you can run, lie in a hammock, help your parents in the garden - in a word, there are a lot of activities. We will look at the most interesting outdoor activities for 4-year-old children, which they are unlikely to refuse.

Water procedures

The best way to entertain a child outside is to give him water treatments in the sun. To do this, we fill a small swimming pool with water, leave it to warm up in the open air, or fill it with warm water in advance, sit the child down and give him toys suitable for water procedures. 4-year-old children can splash in the water for hours with great pleasure, but it is very important to follow safety precautions.

If the pool structure does not have a roof, be sure to install it in the shade and not in direct sunlight. Don't forget to put a Panama hat on your child's head and use high-quality and completely environmentally friendly sunscreen.

Kite or balloons

Buy a kite or 10 balloons in advance. Select a safe area at your dacha where a child can run around with a kite without tripping and crushing grandma’s tomatoes. If there are a lot of trees in the garden, then balls are suitable, which you can throw, catch and even burst!

Young gardener

Children of this age can already be safely involved in gardening work. At 4 years old, children adore nature and show constant interest in it. Therefore, they will accept any “adult work” - weeding a flower bed, harvesting a crop - with great pleasure.

Hammock

If you have a hammock, you can hang it at a safe height for your child. A 4-year-old child will love to frolic in it!

Entertainment in kindergarten

A separate layer of games and activities that can be used in kindergarten. In this context, it is advisable to use team games that will develop team spirit and help children establish social connections:

Game "Delicious Candy"

Children sit in a circle, one child holds a bag of imaginary candies in his hand. Approaching each child, he gives him a symbolic sweetness. The child’s task: to show with the help of facial expressions and gestures what a delicious candy he got.

Game "What do they call you"

Children sit in a circle and take turns telling what kind words their parents and grandparents call them at home.

Game "Sun"

Children walk in circles to the music. Their hands are like rays of sunshine. Suddenly the music turns off, and the teacher points to one of the children and names the part of his body that is frozen: “Children, look, Alyosha’s hands are completely frozen.” The children's task: to warm up a frozen hand with their rays.

In kindergarten, it is necessary to apply the principle of child freedom to independently choose a game and a partner for it. The teacher’s task is to provide optimal conditions for safe and educational gaming processes.

Developmental activities: what do they consist of?

For the organic development of a child, it is very important to combine play with useful activities that, in a form that is intuitive for the child, will stimulate his logic, imagination, and spatial thinking. Classes will also help you learn basic concepts: counting, writing, reading.

Learning the basics of good parenting

We look at the “good and bad” drawings with the child. We show the child pictures of children in different situations (for example, on one, the child is playing football in the house, and on the other, he is helping his mother around the house) and ask him to explain in which picture the child behaves correctly and in which he does not. Lotto games, where “bad” pictures need to be covered with “good” ones, will be excellent helpers.

Telling a fairy tale using pictures

Using the same principle, you can ask the child to tell a story by analyzing the images that lie in front of him.

We create crafts

Using scissors and colored paper, you can make bright and unusual figures, cut out cartoon characters and fairy-tale heroes. Then you can create an improvised theater for which you can come up with stories together with your child.

Physical exercise

In conjunction with developmental activities, physical activities must also be present. This could be basic gymnastics for the neck, arms, squats, and buckles in place.

Daily routine for a 4 year old child

If a child has developed a certain daily routine, he has already become a habit of doing basic things at a certain time. He has enough time to play and relax, he is less capricious, does not delay bedtime and lunch, and becomes more collected and organized. His meals, as before, are divided into breakfast with lunch and afternoon snack with dinner. With intervals between doses of 3.5-4 hours. But the need for sleep has decreased. Now he needs 12 hours of sleep. Of which 10 hours are allocated for night rest, 2 hours for day rest. To make his sleep healthier and more beneficial, the room must first be ventilated. In the warm season, if possible, it is better to move daytime rest to fresh air - set up a place on the veranda, balcony, or in the garden.

When a child is in kindergarten, mothers have nothing to worry about. There he studies, communicates with similar children, and plays according to the curriculum. A completely different environment at home. What to do with a 4 year old child at home? This question is asked by parents who work, and on short weekends are forced to make time for household chores, relaxation and communication with children. The difficulty is that the chosen activities should be:

• useful for the development of the baby;
• gave the right direction in shaping attitudes towards the world around us, towards ourselves, and people;
• so that they help create an atmosphere of trust and understanding between adults and children;
• taught the child to set goals, be active, and independent.

How does a child develop at 4 years old?

So, in order to figure out what to do with 4-year-old children at home, you need to know something about the characteristics of this age. At 4 years old the child:

• the body actively grows, flexibility, dexterity, and coordination develop;
• the stock of knowledge grows every day, the horizons broaden, which gives rise to asking new questions, looking for answers to them from parents, in the world around them;
• the vocabulary becomes larger, speech becomes clearer and more correct;
• children's imagination and creative potential are clearly manifested;
• the child seeks communication with other children, tries to make friends, learns to interact with society.

What can be concluded? If you are looking for something to keep your 4-year-old child occupied at home, be sure to consider:

• his physical abilities;
• character traits, psychology;
• personal preferences and interests of the baby.

Affordable activities at home for children 4 years old

Children at the age of 4 enter a period when they eagerly take knowledge from the world around them. And the basis of a child’s universe is parents. It is they who must organize the right activities that are useful for the general, physical and mental development of the baby. What you put into your little why now will become the basis for the development of his habits, life principles and personality.

A simple way to keep a 4-year-old child occupied at home, to attract his attention while his mother is cooking or resting is to turn on a cartoon, let him play on a tablet or phone. There is ongoing debate about the benefits of such an activity for 4-year-old children. Psychologists confidently declare that long sessions of computer games, television programs, even quiet TV operation as a background are harmful for young children. They lead to the problem of social adaptation, mental disorders, and the development of “clip” (unstable) attention.

The ideal way to keep a 4-year-old child occupied at home is to get him interested in playing. It’s good if other children or adults also participate in the game. What tools do caring parents have in their arsenal?

1. Any types of creativity:

• modeling from plasticine, soft clay;
• drawing with paints, pencils, crayons, felt-tip pens;
• applique made of paper, cardboard, newspapers, natural materials;
• needlework;
• design.

Children's stores offer children 4 years old such a selection of materials and tools for creative activities that their eyes widen. With their help, you can keep your baby occupied at home for at least several hours if you alternate between different types of activities. By the way, try to take part in the creative process yourself. So the child will be interested, and you will learn something new together with him. You can play creative games with your children even when you are busy. It is enough for parents to show interest - ask what the child is drawing, suggest ideas, help in choosing colors.

2. Cultural education:

• love of books;
• acquaintance with art;
• musical development.

How to teach children to love reading? From the age of 4, reading interesting and useful books together should become your family tradition. There should be many illustrations on the pages of the book so that the child can imagine the characters and the atmosphere of the fairy tale. While reading, you can talk about the actions of the heroes and invent your own version of the story’s denouement. If you don't have time for live reading, use audiobooks. They develop auditory memory and phonetic hearing.

A child can fall in love with music and art through positive emotions, through play. For example, what can a 4-year-old child do at home if not by singing naughty children's songs? By the way, such entertainment is suitable for both a long trip and a walk.

3. Physical development

This includes active games and exercise. Usually children compensate for the need for movement on the street. But if for some reason a walk is not possible, then you need to think about what energetic games to occupy 4-year-old children at home without consequences for the interior. Excellent options are dancing, competitions with adults “who can do more…” (sit down, bend over).

What to do with children at home while parents are busy?

Combining adult activities and communicating with children can sometimes be difficult. The wrong approach leads to both areas of life suffering and parents feeling guilty. But there is one unique tactic that will allow you to keep up with everything. It is proposed by the famous author, part-time mother, Anna Bykova in the book “Developmental activities for the “lazy mother”. In her opinion, there is no need to come up with complicated methods and spend a lot of time to keep 4-year-old children occupied at home with something useful. You just need to show a little imagination, take interest in your baby’s games, and the most ordinary things will turn into useful developmental activities.

When you cook, your child will be happy to help. Entrust him with washing vegetables or fruits in a basin, mixing salad in a large bowl, setting the table with napkins, spoons and other safe items. The baby will definitely enjoy rolling the dough on the table and making figures out of it while mom prepares dumplings or pies.

You can keep your little one busy with things not related to yours. While you are at the stove, let your child do some “edible” creativity next to you. He will be delighted to play with spaghetti, make an applique of pasta shells, coffee beans, and then paint it in bright colors.

There will be something for the little one to do during the cleaning process. Children 4 years old can be entrusted with sorting laundry after washing, wiping dust, and cleaning up toys.

As you can see, if you have the desire and ingenuity, there will always be something to keep 4-year-old children occupied at home. And it’s not difficult to interest kids – they are always happy to play something new.

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As a child approaches senior preschool age, parents think about how to unobtrusively prepare him for school, correctly laying the foundation for future successful learning. For children 4–5 years old, the best educational activities are play activities. And it is better to select them based on the age characteristics and needs of the baby.

Age characteristics of a child 4–5 years old

Now the child is truly entering the most favorable period for assimilating a wide variety of information. This is facilitated by the level of development that the preschooler has achieved physically and intellectually.

• By this age, imagery becomes available to the child’s thinking and imagination develops. He understands what an object looks like and can identify objects by color, size, height, length, width.
• Voluntary memory begins to develop: the baby remembers the instructions given to him and is able to learn a poem. Verbal and figurative memory is formed.
• Increases concentration. Now the preschooler is able to hold it on one action for up to 20 minutes.
• Motor skills also improve. Improves gross and fine motor skills, coordination, and balance.
• In creativity, the child has access to detailing in drawings, cutting, gluing, designing according to a model and his own design.
• The child's speech also becomes richer. The pronunciation of most sounds and diction improves. Children imitate different sounds and intonation appears. Kids show a keen interest in rhyme. The leading motive for communication among preschoolers of this age is cognitive: “why?” They strive for new knowledge that adults should give.
• The main form of development remains play. Now it becomes a role-playing game. Therefore, in order for developmental activities to be interesting and useful, they should be built on the basis of games.

Taking these features into account, we can conclude that classes with children at this stage should look like an integral system.

To correctly draw up a lesson plan with a 5-year-old child at home, consider the following nuances.

• In kindergarten, the baby already has daily classes in various areas, including physical education. Therefore, it is important to clarify the program of these classes so that you can complement it at home, and not duplicate or contradict it.
• You can only study at home on weekends or in the evening. Taking this into account, do not leave active activities and too active fun games until late in the evening.
• After kindergarten, you will have little time left, so plan no more than 2 activities per day.
• If your child does not attend kindergarten, you will have to develop his curriculum yourself based on his skills, abilities, and interests.
• Developmental play tasks for children 4–5 years old should include all aspects of their activity (logic, attention, thinking, memory, speech, movement). Classes should be distributed evenly throughout the week.

Developing speech

If a child has problems with pronunciation, speech classes should include articulation exercises for each complex sound. You may need the help of a professional speech therapist.

In general, good speech development tools for a preschooler at this time would be:

• poems, songs learned by heart;
• discussion of plot pictures or works read;
• solving riddles;
• listening to audio stories;
• discussion of everything that happened to the child during the day;
• familiarization with sounds and letters;
• determining the first letter in a word, dividing the word into syllables.

Speech skills can be developed with simple game exercises. You can ask your child:

• “What happens...?” (long, red, hot, sharp, etc.);
• "What happens if… ?" (the ball will fall into the water, a black cloud will appear in the sky, I will eat the snow);
• “What can I do...?” (with an apple, a book, a ball, cookies, scissors...);
• "What do you mean where?" (what items are in the bedroom, hallway, kitchen; in which room is there a TV, bed, frying pan, hanger...);
• "Who is this?" (for example: long-eared, gray, coward - who is this?).

Games to develop logical thinking

At this age, the child should already be able to generalize and differentiate objects according to a certain criterion, work according to a model, and build simple reasoning to solve any problems.

In order to stimulate a preschooler to think logically, you can offer him a variety of games. These can be either store-bought development toys (sorters, puzzles, construction sets, children's lotto) or completely household ones.

For example, your child will have to use their logical skills in the following tasks.

• He is asked to generalize objects according to some characteristic (name everything round in the room, everything yellow, everything soft).
• Determine how two pictures or toys are similar and how they are different.
• Choose identical objects from a variety of objects (balls, bunnies, cubes, etc.).
• Assemble a building from a construction set according to a model.
• Find an extra item out of several and explain why it is extra.
• Find paired objects (both real and on cards or pictures). The child will have to determine the sign by which to look for a pair (for a plate - a spoon, for a hat - a scarf, for a chicken - an egg).
• Find a way out of the drawn labyrinth (they are often found in children's educational books or magazines). Variations of such “confusions” can be different: help a cat catch a mouse, meet a dog with a puppy, find a key for Pinocchio, etc.

Memory is not only visual

A person remembers not only what he sees, but also what he hears or does. Little Man is no exception. Therefore, memory development must be comprehensive and affect all these aspects.

• Visual memory is developed by games for memorizing a drawing or picture with their subsequent description, describing from memory the location of objects in a room, on a shelf, on a table. You can ask the child to remember what he wore for a walk yesterday, what his mother was wearing. Or draw a grid of several cells on paper, place small objects in each, and then, after giving the child time to memorize, turn it away and swap several objects. Let him try to restore the original arrangement.
• Auditory memory is trained by memorizing poems, nursery rhymes, songs, as well as retelling fairy tales or impressions of significant events, and following oral instructions from an adult. For example, buy several items in an impromptu store and not forget anything. Or place items, setting the table, in a certain sequence.
• Motor memory can be trained by all kinds of games in which children repeat the movements of adults in a certain order. Sometimes an adult can “make a mistake,” while the child needs to do everything correctly and not get lost.

When going to the store or for a walk, plan your route in advance and ask your child to comment on where to go next. This is also auditory memory training.

Attention - attention

In order for a child to grow up attentive, be able to concentrate and quickly respond to any changes, it is important to train his attention. You can start as early as 4 years of age. At the same time, it is also not necessary to purchase expensive manuals: the suitable “equipment” is always at hand.

For example, you can play these games.

• Variations on the theme “edible - inedible” (sweet - unsweetened, flies - does not fly, clothes - not clothes).
• "What's new?" (on the table, in the picture, in the guise of dad, in mom’s clothes).
• “Find the differences” (in two pictures).
• “Caravan” - the mother names the animal, the child repeats it and adds his own. Mom repeats both and adds a third. You need to repeat in the order in which the animals are named. They play until someone gets lost.
• "What changed?". During a morning walk, mother and child try to remember everything that surrounds them, and in the evening they compare what has changed (someone hung up the laundry, old women sat on a bench, a car drove up to the next door);
• Close your eyes and name as many different sounds as possible in the room (a clock, the noise of a refrigerator, the purring of a cat) or outside the window (cars driving, birds singing, the wind rustling).
• Close your eyes and tell what order is on the shelf, on the table, what mom is wearing.

It is important to start with easier tasks, gradually making them more difficult, and not forgetting to praise your child for success.

Reading and writing

Your child will need these skills in school. After all, the first thing he will have to master by first grade is reading and writing.

In the fifth year, you need to plan lessons with your preschooler to prepare your hand for writing. Here you will already need the first teaching aids - children's copybooks. These are excellent “developers” for the hand, helping the child develop the necessary muscles so that the hand does not get tired while writing. In children's copybooks, the child is asked to trace simple patterns point by point and then reproduce them independently.

To reinforce the perception of the first sound in a word (the entire study of letters is based on this), you can glue cards with images of letters to different objects in the house. Let the child determine in which case the card is glued correctly and in which case it is not.

When teaching preschoolers to read, more and more mothers choose Zhukova’s primer. It consistently shows how letters “merge” into syllables and gives important recommendations to parents. In addition, Zhukova’s teaching methods meet the requirements of school curricula.

Before you start teaching your child to read, teach him to hear all the sounds in words, in different parts of the word (at the beginning, middle, end), and also to isolate syllables in words. You can find many entertaining games for this.

Only with this approach will the child learn to read and write without mistakes (children often transfer into writing what they hear or perceive incorrectly).

Learning mathematics

The first thing that comes to mind here is numeracy skills. Because it is still difficult for a child to master calculations. How to teach a preschooler to count?

A child can understand how a specific number relates to the designated number, for example, using counting sticks or cards that depict the number and various objects in the corresponding quantity.

To reinforce counting in order, you can use coloring pages that require you to connect numbered dots.

Also, the consolidation of ordinal counting is facilitated by the constant recounting of surrounding objects: houses, benches, birds, steps on the stairs, apples in a vase.

Mathematics is also... By this age, the child should already know basic geometric shapes. Now it is important to consolidate this knowledge, as well as develop the preschooler’s thinking by playing interesting games with figures. For example, you can fold triangles into rectangles, squares, rhombuses, and other triangles. You can make rectangles from squares.

It is also interesting for children at this age to draw using geometric shapes (everyone knows that a triangle is a skirt, a circle is a sun, a triangle with a rectangle is a house). Also, the child can already compare figures by color, shape, size.

Musicality, sensory, movement

One of the main factors in the proper development of a preschooler at this age remains movement. He must move a lot. This increases his agility, endurance, coordination, develops muscles, and strengthens the skeleton. Therefore, the lesson program should have a lot of space for gymnastics, dancing, exercises, cycling, and all kinds of outdoor games. You can enroll your preschooler in some sports section.

And if motor activity is accompanied by well-chosen melodies, the child will also receive musical development. He will have an improved sense of rhythm, perception of fast and slow music, sad and cheerful.

At this age, a preschooler can be given to listen not only to children's melodies, but also to classical ones. He already has his favorite tunes, to which he begins to dance or hum.

Sensory perception is, first of all, the development of tactile sensitivity. The baby should have the opportunity to touch a variety of materials and textures: soft, hard, smooth, rough, fluffy, prickly, warm, cold. A good game is to recognize objects by touch without seeing them (for example, by taking them out of a bag).

Improving fine motor skills plays an important role. This helps improve all mental abilities: thinking, speech, memory. In addition, good fine motor skills prepare the hand for writing: the child will hold the pen correctly, the hand will strain and get tired less. Games with small objects and materials are good for this purpose: cubes, construction sets, mosaics, sand, cereals. This also includes tying shoelaces, fastening zippers, unscrewing corks, drawing, appliqué, and sculpting.

Other knowledge

The expansion of horizons is facilitated by the first ideas about geography that a child can get, for example, during walks (tell him what the horizon, wildlife, seasons, water and land, sun and earth are).

Special manuals for preschoolers will help deepen their knowledge. These are such “cognitive things” as, for example, encyclopedias, a globe or a magnetic map of the world, which is accompanied by pictures of plants, animals, and landmarks of different countries. This is how the baby learns about peoples, about his homeland, about continents and islands, about lakes, seas, plains, mountains, cardinal points.

By the way, geography is the main subject about which children at this age ask many questions. Sometimes simply answering them is enough to give the child all the necessary knowledge.

A child can get ideas about the history and culture of his people by looking at Vasnetsov’s paintings, listening to epics about heroes, stories about the life of princes (possibly in the form of fairy tales), drawing the nature of Russia, churches, epic and fairy-tale heroes, listening to stories from the history of his family (about grandparents, family traditions), while exploring the beauty of nature and the sights of their hometown during walks.

It is good to introduce a preschooler to the traditions and culture of our people using the example of folk holidays (Easter, Maslenitsa, Ivan Kupala).

But, according to most experts, it is too early to learn foreign languages ​​at this age. Firstly, memorization will be mechanical, and secondly, for accurate language acquisition, an appropriate language environment is now needed. Thirdly, it is still difficult to properly motivate a child to learn an incomprehensible language. But the risk of ruining your pronunciation in your native language is very high. In addition, such study requires the presence of a teacher: parents are not recommended to teach their child foreign languages ​​on their own.

It is necessary to develop the skills and abilities of a preschool child in a comprehensive manner. Then he will be fully prepared for further successful development and learning at school.