Four Year Old Development - Physical

I'm sitting here by my desk, watching intently at my own four year old daughter playing and having a jolly good time with her younger 2 year old brother. Often times, I sit and ponder back to times when they were just babies, although they're still babies! I look at the thousands of photos we took of our children over the past few years, and while with each passing photo, they still look like my sweet babies, the unstoppable effects of growing up slowly but surely creeps up upon us, and I sit feeling melancholy over the plight of time and love over our beautiful children. I'm sure this is not just something that I experience as a mother (or my husband as a father), but countless other parents experience these feelings and emotions towards their growing children. I can only imagine, that with a blink of an eye, my children will be off to school, college, getting married, having children of their own, and I'll become an old wrinkly grandmother - still sitting here looking at photos wondering "what happened to my babies? They're so grown up now..."

Sentimentalities aside, I'm still sitting here, writing about the physical development of a 4 year old child, and seeing my own toddlers hopping about in front of me, I can only marvel at how children develop and grow! Just a few short year ago, my child was just a baby, couldn't move about freely yet, then slowly learned to flip over, and then learned to crawl, walk, and run...

4 Year Old Physical Development Milestones

As a four year old child continue to grow and develop, his or her muscles continue to mature and motor skills continue to improve. Below, we'll list some physical growth milestones that you may notice with your 4 year old toddler.

• With better motor skills, your child will also have improved hand-eye coordination. With this improvement in coordination, your child gets better at catching balls with their hands. The child is also better able to aim when he or she throws a ball, and can also throw at a farther distance.

• Your child should be quite proficient with walking and running, and can walk up and down stairs one step after another without stopping with both feet on one stair.

• Children at this age can also jump and hop achieving a vertical height of around 4 to 6 inches, and is able to navigate around obstacles and furniture with ease.

• A four year old toddler will show a certain preference for using either their left or right hand by this age, and they can hold a pen or marker properly.

• With their improved ability to hold pencils and markers, the child can draw some very nice pictures, and will be able to draw human figures and shapes with details such as eyes, hair, nose, mouth, hands, fingers, feet, and so on. The child can even depict certain emotions such as happiness or sadness in their drawings. Below is a scanned drawing made by our 4 year old daughter:

This drawing above is a drawing our daughter made of her 2 year old brother, who happened to be crying as she drew this picture. As you can see, it includes features such as the eyes, nose, mouth, short spiky hair, 10 fingers, and also the tears, in a different shade of blue. =) The funny thing is, our son, as he saw me posting this, pointed at the image and started calling loudly, "me! me! me!" He seems to recognize that it's a picture of him that his sister drew. (The light shade of blue you see is the other side of the paper, which is a drawing of herself. We use recycled paper, and it's quite thin, so the backside picture is showing somewhat as well.)

• The child can also hold and use child-safe scissors quite well and be able to cut paper and work with simple crafts.

• The child can also paint and work with clay (such as playdough) to make various simple objects and shapes.

• The average height for 4 year old children is around 42 inches and the average weight of a 4 year old child is around 38 to 40 pounds.

• The child can also draw shapes and letters, and with some time and patience spent teaching your child, they can learn to read and write by this age. Don't believe me? See a video of our 4.2 year old daughter reading storybooks here.

Well, that about covers most of everything that comes to my mind when it comes to the physical development milestones for a four year old child. Children develop at different rates, and the list here is but a general guideline of what you might notice with your own child. Some children develop faster than others, while others develop slower. The important thing to remember is to provide your child with a safe, loving environment for growing up in. Provide them with plenty of crafts, markers, painting, playdough, colorful books, and lots of TLC!

If you'd like your child to get a head start and develop one of the most important skills in life, then click here to learn about a super simple, effective program that will teach your child to read spending just minutes each day.

4 Year Old Social and Emotional Development >>