Let's look at the main developmental milestones for 5 to 6 year olds. 

Developmental Milestones: 5 - 6 year olds

This is the year many kids start kindergarten. It's a real transitional year for your child as they learn to adjust to new routines and expectations, as well as navigate new relationships and situations. 

Between the ages of 5-6 years old, these are the milestones you should expect to see:

• Many five-year-olds love to sing, dance, and act! They love attention and aim to please.
• They can tell what's make-believe and what's real and have active imaginations.
• By this age, they will have developed a desire for more independence and can be quite cooperative (when they want to!).
• Your kindergartner now knows how to share, but doesn't necessarily always want to!
• They are now speaking much more clearly than before and will talk in full sentences, with a strong vocabulary of around 2000 or more words.
• Vocabulary growth is so rapid at this age, as they’re learning 5-10 new words each day, that their brains often think faster than they can speak.
• Their knowledge is expanding at such a speed and they can understand everyday concepts, such as food and money.
• They’ll be more skilled using pencils to write with, scissors to cut shapes with and can also now tie their own shoelaces (if taught).
• Their balance has gotten a lot better and they can now stand on one foot with their eyes closed
• Some kids will have started reading simple picture books – starting off with easy three-letter words (like "sat", and "mat"), and sight words (like "the" and "she" and "he").
• They know their primary colors, can count to 10 and can memorize their phone number and birthday (if taught)
• Instead of always being the ones to ask the questions, your kindergartener can now provide reasons and answers when asked “why”.
• They can also make small decisions like what they want for lunch.
• They can complete a puzzle board with 8 to 12 pieces and draw a person with at least eight body parts.
• They know to look both ways before crossing the street and can buckle their seatbelts.
• They can pronounce most sounds, although Z, L, R and TH may still be too hard.
• They're getting better at controlling their behavior, taking turns to speak in a conversation, and understanding when they're being disruptive.
• They understand daily routines and can begin/complete familiar tasks. 
• They're great at grouping objects together, for example, they know that "pink" and "yellow" are colors, and that "rabbit" and "pig" are animals, etc
• They can also understand jokes and riddles – and find jokes about poos and wees especially funny!

 

The Best Activities for Kids: 5 to 6 year olds

 

Running Around an Obstacle Course

Playing catch with your kindergartners is a great way for them to practice their hand-eye coordination and gross motor skills. You can even build them a mini obstacle course in the backyard for them to run, hop, skip and jump around!

 

Spending Time at a Playground

Watch your 5-year-old and their friends giggle in delight as they roll down the hill, ride their scooters down the path, climb up the play structure, and go down the slide at your local park. A great way for your kids to exercise their gross motor skills, get some fresh air, and stay active!

 

Telling Their Own Stories

Bring their favorite stories to life by encouraging your children to act out stories they love the most. They'll have fun playing different characters, talking in silly voices, and dressing up.

 

Drawing on Sidewalks

This is a great way for your children to demonstrate their artistic abilities, think big, and use their imagination! They can draw, scribble, and color in. They can play hopscotch, tic tac toe, or make a track for their car toys and trains!

 

Skoolzy’s Recommendations:

Skoolzy's Connect A Straws

These connect-a-straws enable children to design and create simple shapes or complex structures using their imagination and creativity as they build multi-dimensional shapes and forms using the connecting straws. The interlocking connecting pieces provide endless building and thinking possibilities and can be enjoyed by toddlers, preschoolers, and adults! The building set can be used for fine motor skill development, eye-hand coordination, primary color recognition, pre-math skills, occupational therapy, and just plain old open-ended fun!

 

Skoolzy's Preschool Alphabet Puzzle

This Montessori alphabet puzzle is multi-purpose in fine motor skills development using the peg stems for stacking and spelling games with the double-sided flower petals; one side has lowercase letters and the other uppercase. The flowers are designed for easy manipulation by little hands and younger kids can exercise their pincer grip and develop fine motor skills while color sorting the flower manipulatives and stacking the pegs. Preschoolers will develop letter recognition skills and memory through gameplay as they learn to spell their names for the first time and sound out the letter sounds. This preschool learning toy can actively boost memory while having fun.  

 

Skoolzy's Three Bear Family

Your preschooler is sure to love the language and counting bears set. Our matching cups scholastic learning toy includes 27-counting bears with three containers (large, medium, small), and three dice for size, color and preposition. This set is great for teaching prepositions (behind, in front, etc), color sorting and size recognition. 

 

Skoolzy Number Puzzles

This great STEM toy is an awesome preschool learning toy that promotes number recognition, counting, color recognition, hand-eye coordination, problem-solving skills, and STEM learning, all while having fun! It can be used with bingo chips and abacus for extended learning!

 

Skoolzy's Butterfly Counting Game

Kids can strengthen their fine motor muscles when building the sorting garden by interlocking the petals together. They'll have fun while learning colors as they  match the different butterfly shapes. They can also learn to count using the number cards to create simple math equations. This award-winning math manipulative toy includes rainbow color sorting & counting activities and is designed to encourage, motivate and stimulate your child's mind.

 

Skoolzy's Learning Tree

 

 

Learning how to count is an important milestone in any child's life, and now your child can have fun while learning with this popular number button and tree set.  The set contains 10 pairs of colorful shapes to help preschoolers learn to count, sort, and match! This learning toy can be used for competitive or cooperative play and has three levels of play to grow with your child. 

 

Download and share our free Developmental Milestones Checklist for 5-6 year olds

Other Milestones you might want to look at:

DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES: Birth to 4 months old
 
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES: 4 to 8 months old
 
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES: 8 to 12 months old
 
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES: 12 to 18 months old
 
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES: 18 months to 2 years old
 
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES: 2 to 3 years old
 
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES: 3 to 4 years old
 
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES: 4 to 5 years old