The growing child

5-9s

Of course, no child is absolutely typical in every area and you will know children who differ widely from the developmental stages given below. However, by knowing the typical behaviour and abilities of children at various ages you can plan sessions more effectively and you can understand where it might be necessary to modify pre-prepared materials if you own children are struggling to achieve, or well ahead of the average.

Physical development

It may seem to be stating the obvious, but a five-year-old child is still small! Go into schools and see the furniture used in the children’s classrooms. Tables and chairs are tailored to the size of the children; there is not an expectation – so often made in church halls – that one size (adult size of course!) fits all.

Between the ages of five and nine children are mastering new motor skills. By five they can usually run, jump, hop, walk up and down stairs, catch a ball and hold a knife and fork. Over the next four years they will be learning new skills such as using a bat to hit a ball, skip, swim using recognizable strokes, skate and ride a bike. Showing you how fast they can run, how high they can jump or how accurately they can kick a ball will be important. Eight- and nine-year-olds will usually enjoy organized, team games but they are likely to become boisterous – so clear the playing area and be prepared for minor accidents!

Finer skills and hand-eye co-ordination will also be developing. Five-year-olds will still be clumsy in the way they use pencils and paint brushes and will need considerable help with activities that require cutting or detailed manipulation of craft materials. By nine they will be much more dexterous. For some this will mean that they can dash off a drawing or craft with increasing speed, ready to move onto the next activity as quickly as possible, while for others it will mean that they can persevere, getting every last detail of their picture or craft right. Improving pencil skills also means an improved writing ability. A five-year-old will only just have the motor skills required to write large letters and single words such as their name or simple nouns. By nine the disparity in writing skills between children will be quite marked. Some will be struggling to form readable sentences whilst others will be writing fluent paragraphs of neat text.

For five-year-olds the world is still very tangible – they can learn so much more about an object if they touch it or pick it up. By nine they have improved observational skills and can make judgements about things without always having to touch them and this increased awareness also shows in their art. At five all the people a child draws will stand face on and look straight out of the paper at you. By eight or nine they will begin to introduce perspective to their pictures, people and animals will have more realistic body proportions and may be drawn in action.

Social and emotional development

By five, children are beginning to see themselves as individuals who fit into a structure of relationships with family, friends and other influential adults. They are starting to recognize the rights of others, but self-constraint and consideration only comes gradually – firstly to please parents and others and later because they realize that it helps them to be accepted and liked by their peers.

Young children will begin to make friends with children of the same age, although they are still self-centred and find the necessary give and take of friendships hard to sustain. As children get older, by seven or eight, having a best friend becomes very important. This is especially true for girls – boys are often happy to remain in looser friendship groups. Spending time with their peers becomes more attractive than spending time with family or other adults and they begin to learn to subordinate their own wants to those of the group and start to develop social skills. By eight or nine, children will have developed their understanding of family relationships into a wider understanding of their community and will be aware of their racial and ethnic backgrounds. They will be beginning to seek a degree of independence from parental domination and older children or teens may form their role models.

Five-year-olds need to succeed – they want to win games, to quickly master a new skill, to gain an adult’s attention. They easily become frustrated and annoyed by their own failure and tears and tantrums are likely to be the result. They need constant encouragement and a sense of a secure environment, in terms of familiar surroundings and a routine, to be able to continually push the boundaries and develop new skills. As they get older tantrums are likely to be replaced by fits of sulking and emotions will swing back and forth. They are ready to tackle most new challenges and will get excited and fired up by them, but quickly despondent and uninterested if they don’t immediately succeed.

Younger children, wanting to show that they know what is ‘right’, will be critical of other children’s behaviour and will be quick to tell the adults in charge when someone else is ‘wrong’. As they get older, children begin to empathize with others and will give and take peer-criticism, being in less of a hurry to take grievances to adults. Between the ages of five and nine, children shift from seeing adults as the owners of all knowledge and the solvers of all problems, to realizing that they may be fallible and may not have the solutions to every problem.

Mental development

This age group are curious about everything and will have a voracious appetite for new information.

Five to nines enjoy stories, especially when there is lots of action and adventure, and they will now differentiate between reality and fantasy. Almost all children in the age range will appreciate having stories read to them, and older children, who do not have specific reading difficulties, will enjoy reading to themselves. Joke books and comics will be particularly popular with many.

Art is an excellent way for children to express themselves, particularly for younger children who have less developed writing and language skills. Use children’s art work as a way of initiating conversation, but don’t correct or criticize their masterpiece!

Vocabulary develops alongside other mental skills. Five-year-olds talk mainly about things rather than feelings. If they are describing someone they will look at their visible features. ‘Nice’ or ‘nasty’ is about as far as they will go in describing character. By seven or eight looks, rather than behaviour, will usually determine their opinion of a person’s character. Their judgement also tends to be extreme – people are awful or wonderful and ‘very’ is a well-used word. Later children will begin to realize that people are not generally so clear-cut and that an individual’s behaviour can vary between good and bad, but only a few nine-year-olds will have reached this level of discernment.

Five-year-olds begin to develop the ability to know right from wrong, although self –restraint only comes gradually and a child who is considerate one minute may be very selfish again the next. At five or six their decision as to whether something is classified as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ is usually determined by the reaction of adults to the particular behaviour. Even in matters of safety the child’s decision to avoid running out into the road will be based on the fact that the action will be met with disapproval, rather than self-preservation. As they get older moral reasoning becomes more determined by a need to be accepted by peers and, eventually, personal feelings of fairness. Eight- and nine-year-olds become very sensitive to justice and fair play.

Extracted from Children’s Ministry Guide to Tailored Teaching for 5-9s by Sue Price