What can a child can do at each age?
In order to plan talks, lessons and activities that are appropriate we need to know what children are capable of at each age. This is a huge subject.
We are going to look at a few key areas:
- SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND COMMUNICATION
- READING AND WRITING,
- AND FINALLY THINKING.
Before we look at those areas- let’s just consider for a moment about why it’s important to know what children are capable of: The big idea is that we need to keep on top of where children are at- because they’re always changing.
Children develop massively during their years just before and during primary school. As adults we’re used to being able to read, write, think and interact socially but the children that we teach are in the process of learning those things.
Table of Contents
Even in a single group there is a huge variation in what children can and cannot do.
Sometimes that’s purely down to age, sometimes due to the opportunities, they have at home to learn, sometimes because they have a specific learning difficulty.
So, we need to pitch things at different levels in order to include all the children. That’s what educationalists call differentiation and is a skill that takes time for us to develop.
So…what can children do?
Let’s start with SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT and COMMUNICATION.
When the children first come into our 2-4 year old group they’re usually able to speak and they’re certainly able to argue with other children when they both want a toy. That’s important to know because they often haven’t learned to share.
So if you work with 2-4 year olds you may find yourself needing to teach them some strategies – like “How about you play with it for a little while and then we’ll let him play with it?”
You’ll also notice that their play tends to be solitary or what we call parallel. They will play alongside other children on the same activity but they don’t often interact much.
Therefore, team games don’t really work well with this age group. And even pass the parcel needs some close management to ensure the children pass to each other.
Once they get into the 5-7 year group they’ve started to learn to play with each other and can enjoy games.
Boys especially develop the skills of playing in teams earlier than girls. Girls on the other hand usually develop their skills of verbal communication more quickly.
So, with 5-7 year olds it’s much easier to use games – however, you’ll notice that some children, especially the younger ones will say they don’t want to play. That’s partly because they’re used to parallel or solitary play rather than interacting with other children.
Do your best to encourage them to join in. Otherwise other children might start to opt out as well.
By the time they get to age 7-11 they’re much more capable of team games and thoroughly enjoy them. Some will get quite competitive and they have a much greater sense of fairness, so they’ll be much more likely to be OK if they’re ‘out’ than they would have done in aged 5-7.
The 7-11s are also much more able to discuss and are learning to see each other’s point of view.
Next, READING.
There is so much that we do that expects children to be confident readers. So what can they do at what age?
Well, aged 2-4 haven’t yet learned to read. Some have been taught some words at home or some letter sounds, but if you work with 2-4s you should basically assume that you can’t use visual aids or activities that expect them to read.
The vast majority of children start to read in their first year of school. Most of the time they do so by learning to read using phonics. That means the sounds of the letters or combinations of letters.
So, if you’re asking a 4-7 yr old to write something and you’re spelling it out then get into the habit of using the letter sounds, not the names of the captials.
So, a b c d e etc…plus things like ‘ch’ and ‘sh’., not A B C D E… Their reading develops very quickly in school years 1 and 2 (that’s 6-7yrs old)
By the time they reach age 7 most children can read from a Children’s Bible.
So, if you’re expecting children to read a Bible verse, for example, use a very clear font – ideal ones are Comic Sans or Century Gothic – and use at least 14 point…and more like 16 or 18 for reception age children.
Please please don’t use captials only- use sentence case – in other words lower case letters except for when capitals are required for names, places, start of sentence etc.
Capital letters are much more difficult for children to read. Now, these are huge generalizations. Some children achieve far above these levels…but averages being averages that means that some children achieve at much lower levels.
But we’re not there to teach them to read. So if a child is struggling with their reading we need to find ways of helping them to access the Bible passage that don’t require them to read well.
That’s another reason why interaction and visual aids are so important.
And with WRITING it’s a similar story:
Writing skills develop rapidly during their time in our group for 4-7 year olds. They come into that group only being able probably to write their name and leave able to write details about their experiences.
Finally how does their THINKING develop?
Well, the most important thing to note is that the 2-7 year olds have what we call concrete thinking. That means that they understand language literally and find figurative language very difficult to understand.
By the time they reach the top end of the 7-11 group they are more able to understand figurative language.
So, if you tell those younger children a parable such as the Parable of the Sower and then ask them what it’s about they’ll probably say “Birds. Stones. Weeds. Seeds and a farmer.” They’ve understood it literally and need real help in seeing that it’s about how people respond to the truth of the gospel.
An older child is much more likely to think conceptually and be able to spot the connections and see how people’s faith can be strangled by materialistic weeds, or how the devil can be like a bird and snatch the seed away before it germinates.
As adults we see these connections much more easily…but children don’t.
So, work hard to make those connections for them. The other implication of this is that we need to be careful of using figurative language that often comes naturally to us.
The obvious one to avoid is “Asking Jesus into your heart” which means very little to a primary-aged child. Saying something like “Asking Jesus to be your friend and king” or “savior and King” is much more ‘concrete’ and useful. And much more scriptural.
Now, the Bible contains lots of figurative language. So it’s not that we don’t teach those passages – but we do need to be aware of how a child thinks and help them to make the connections.
It’s also worth saying that younger children love fictional stories and as they hear from you about Jesus will often confuse Him with some of the characters they meet in books and films etc.
Don’t worry about that. They’re just gradually making sense of the world. Just keep teaching them about Jesus the King of everything and encouraging them to put their faith in Him.
So there we have it- some pointers about SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS, READING AND WRITING, and THINKING to keep help you understand what a child can do at each stage. Let’s pray that we can tailor our children’s ministry to get the most out of our time with them.
