In preschool age, children have a strong interest in physical and mental activities. They are curious about the world around them and frequently ask "Why?", "Where?", "What?", and "How?". This is also a period when children need order, family rituals, calm guidance, and a stable environment both at home and in preschool. It is often referred to as a time of "carefree childhood," with no formal duties or responsibilities — just time to play. However, through play, children develop skills that form the foundation for future learning, including reading, writing, and math.
The main areas that should be developed during this stage are:
Speech development
Visual perception
Auditory perception
Spatial perception
Spatial orientation
Graphomotor skills (fine motor skills needed for writing)
Basic mathematical concepts
3-4 years
Motor skills
Gross Motor Skills
Gross motor skills form the foundation for the development of fine motor skills. Therefore, it's important to encourage physical activities for your child. Running, jumping, crawling, climbing over and under obstacles, throwing, balancing, and swinging all have a positive impact on your child's development. If you enjoy parent-child exercise classes, definitely take advantage of them. If you don't like organized activities, simply go outside with your child, visit playgrounds, and play tag, hide-and-seek, and encourage your child to climb on playground structures without fear.
Fine Motor Skills
Fine motor skills can be improved by involving children in daily activities and self-care routines. Baking Christmas cookies together is a perfect example! Encourage your child to try brushing their own teeth (just finish it off for them), combing their hair, and dressing themselves. Activities like zipping zippers and buttoning buttons are fantastic for developing fine motor skills.
Try different craft activities like cutting (start with strips of paper and later move on to larger areas), gluing, threading beads, modeling clay, crumpling paper, as well as using tools like saws, screwdrivers, and hammers to hammer nails or tighten bolts.
Playing with sand in a sandbox can be replaced at home with a tray filled with flour or semolina. You and your child can also draw and practice line-making in these materials. Another great option is kinetic sand, which is an enjoyable sensory activity for children while also helping to strengthen their hands. This type of sand allows for the creation of beautiful sandcastles, molds, and other shapes.
Touching objects made of different materials or recognizing materials by touch is a great way to develop tactile perception. You can use bowls filled with legumes, pasta, pebbles, beads, or semolina. Later, you can challenge your child to identify objects by touch alone.
A simple way to create a tactile memory game is to place three or four pairs of identical objects (like small balls, stones, toy cars) under a cloth. The child then uses their sense of touch to find and match the pairs. You can also introduce classic board games like memory games (pexeso), lotto, or dominoes.
Pre-Writing Skills
Around the age of three, children should start using a "tripod grip" to hold a pencil. This means that the pencil rests on the last joint of the middle finger and is held in place by the pads of the thumb and index finger. The fingers and hands should be relaxed, and the pencil should not be gripped too tightly. The index finger should not be bent backward. The pencil should extend beyond the skin fold between the thumb and index finger, with the pinky and ring fingers loosely curled into the palm.
Drawing and Handwriting
Don't force your child to draw; instead, provide opportunities for creative expression. It's best to use large surfaces for drawing. You can draw with chalk on the sidewalk or use finger paints on large sheets of paper. At three years old, it's normal for children to switch hands when drawing. Let them choose which hand to use, and over time, they will naturally settle on one. However, if your child is already drawing a lot on their own, it’s worth checking if they are holding the pencil correctly.
Visual perception
A three-year-old child should be able to match objects of the same color. Name the colors often while your child is playing. For example, if you are threading beads, you can ask your child to first find all the blue beads, then the yellow ones, and so on. As you work together, describe what you’re doing: "Now we're threading a yellow bead..." Over time, the child will learn to recognize and point to the correct color, and by the age of four, they should be able to name basic colors on their own.
Spend plenty of time looking through books together. The more complex an illustration is, with more elements, the more challenging it is for a young child to recognize and focus on individual objects. When exposed to too many stimuli, the child may become confused and struggle to distinguish between individual objects, which may blend together in their perception. The same can happen if a child is surrounded by an overload of toys and decorations in their environment. To support development, use books with simple images and encourage your child to tidy up the toys they have taken out.
When reading a book, guide your child to find specific elements in the pictures. For example, ask, "Where's the dog? Show me the dog in the picture." After you put the book away, ask the child to recall what they saw in the pictures. This helps to develop their visual memory.
To support the child's understanding of parts and wholes, activities like puzzles (with just a few pieces), building blocks, or assembly toys are excellent.
Spatial perception
Movement is essential for a child’s ability to perceive space, determine direction, and estimate distance. Activities with building blocks and construction sets also help develop spatial awareness. Use words like "up" and "down" (e.g., "What is at the top of the picture?" or "At the top of our body, we have our head and hair; at the bottom, we have our feet..."). Incorporate prepositions like "on," "into," and "in" in everyday activities ("Put the book on the shelf," "Put the toy into the box").
Time perception
Understanding the concept of time and the flow of time is important for children to recognize that each activity has its own time and place — for example, in the morning, we get up, get dressed, have breakfast, brush our teeth, and then head to preschool (or play at home if not attending preschool). A regular daily rhythm helps create a structured day and provides children with a sense of security.
To develop the ability to perceive the sequence of events, observe and talk about daily activities. Discuss what happened before and what happened after, as well as what needs to be done first and what comes next (e.g., "First, we put on our socks, then our shoes" or "First, we clean the vegetables, and then we cook them").
Take advantage of walks to observe nature. Pay attention to animals and their young, and describe what happens. For example, "First, a small puppy is born, and then it grows into a dog." You can do the same with plants: "First, there is a flower bud, then it blooms, and later it grows into an apple."
Speech development
Between the ages of 1.5 to 2 years, children enter the so-called "first phase of questions," asking "Who is that?" and "What is that?". Now, between 3 and 4 years, they are in the "second phase of questions," asking "Why?" and "When?". To support language development and thinking, it is important to patiently answer these questions. By the time a child is 3 to 4 years old, they should be speaking in full sentences and using compound sentences. Repeat words often and label everything you are doing or seeing.
At this age, children are typically interested in looking through picture books and commenting on the images they see. Take advantage of this interest. For example, if a child points to a red car in a book and says "Car," the parent can respond, "Yes, it's a car. And it's a red car." The child may then repeat, "Red." The parent can continue, "Yes, red. And your T-shirt is also red." Or, when the child points to the car, you can ask, "Yes, a car. Is it red or blue?"
Keep in mind that the development of speech also depends on motor skills, especially the mobility of the tongue (try clicking the tongue, making a "devil face" by sticking out the tongue, or licking lips), lips (puckering the lips, imitating a fish by shaping the lips into a circle, whistling, smiling, and blowing raspberries), and the jaw (opening and closing the mouth wide like a lion or chewing like a cow). Breathing exercises can also be helpful, such as practicing deep belly breathing. Additionally, encourage the child to mimic sounds, like hissing like a snake, buzzing like a bee, or meowing like a cat.
Auditory perception and memory
To support auditory perception after the age of 3, it is essential to engage in frequent conversations with adults, listen to fairy tales, sing songs, and recite rhymes and poems. It is also important to create an environment that is not oversaturated with auditory stimuli, such as constant background noise from a radio or TV.
If we want to teach children to listen, we must provide the right conditions. This includes regularly reading together and talking about picture books. This not only supports auditory perception but also helps develop language skills. Remember, television cannot replace shared reading time. When watching TV, children often passively absorb the images, but they may not actively listen to the language.
Activity: Try listening to "silence." Focus on subtle sounds like the rustling of leaves in the forest, birdsong, the hum of a radiator, the ticking of a clock, or the distant sound of a passing car.
Basic mathematical concepts
The development of mathematical concepts involves many partial skills and abilities in the areas of motor skills, visual and auditory perception, time perception, and speech. Among geometric shapes, children recognize circles and sometimes squares.
For children aged three to four, the most important way to build pre-numerical concepts is through manipulative activities combined with verbal prompts. The simplest concepts for children at this stage are small/big, few/many, and all. Later, more complex concepts like short/long, narrow/wide, low/high, light/heavy, same, bigger/smaller, and shorter/longer can be introduced. By the end of this period, some children may already passively understand terms like less/more, some, and none. These concepts are best developed through play: placing the big car in the garage, threading a small bead, or cleaning up all the toys. In terms of spatial orientation, it's important to introduce concepts like above, below, lower, higher, in front, and behind.
Children can be introduced to the concept of a number sequence through rhymes (like One, two, Johnny’s coming through…) or during daily activities (e.g., I’ll give you two spoons, can you give me three beads?).
To help children recognize common characteristics of objects, you can sort different items together. For example, sort beads by color or size, pictures by category (furniture, toys, etc.), toys by location (for sand, for the bed, for water), cutlery, or clothing (by color, owner, etc.).
4- 5 years
Motor skills
Gross motor skills are supported similarly to the previous period, but the activities gradually become more challenging. The same applies to fine motor skills, where children work with smaller construction pieces, smaller beads, and similar items.
Most children enjoy drawing, and the variety of themes in their drawings increases. If a child does not show interest in drawing after the age of four, it is advisable to offer activities that develop both gross and fine motor skills more frequently and regularly. Do these activities together so you can support and encourage the child, name the actions, and praise even small successes. Use thick or triangular crayons, ball-shaped drawing tools, triangular wax crayons, or finger paints.
Try to gauge what the child can already do, and offer tasks that are just a little more difficult than their current abilities. If the tasks are too easy, the child may complete them mechanically without learning anything new or may lose interest. On the other hand, tasks that are too challenging can discourage the child, leading to feelings of failure. Pay close attention to the correct grip of the pencil.
Visual perception
By the age of four, children should be able to independently name basic colors. To practice this, it's good to sort objects by color and name the colors aloud. Over time, you can introduce other colors beyond the basics (like orange, purple, etc.).
Children enjoy looking at picture books with fewer details. It is still true that an overload of stimuli (whether in pictures, toys, or the environment in which the child lives) can be overwhelming. This overabundance may prevent the child from focusing, exploring, and fixing their attention on individual objects, making them feel distracted and confused.
Tip: Browse picture books and search for and name individual objects together with the child — even those that are partially hidden.
Children under the age of five tend to focus more on the whole rather than the details. This is why puzzles, for example, become more interesting around this age. Over time, the child learns to notice differences. Encourage their interest in finding differences in pairs of pictures. At first, present pairs of pictures with more distinct differences between the elements.
Visual memory is often developed in children of this age through the game of memory (also known as "pexeso"). However, visual memory can be developed throughout the day. Talk about what the child saw on a trip, at the zoo, or in a picture. This approach also helps develop their speech.
Spatial perception
Movement plays a crucial role in the development of spatial perception. Activities with building blocks and naming spatial relationships (like "above," "below," etc.) are also essential. By the age of 4-5, children typically master the concepts of above/below, low/high, lower/higher, and prepositional phrases like on, into, and in. They also start to solidify their understanding of concepts like front/back, first/last, as well as prepositions such as before/behind, above/below, next to, and between. New concepts such as in the middle, middle one, second-to-last, left, and right begin to emerge.
During daily activities, describe what the child is doing: "Now, put your right foot down, then your left." "Place the apple on the table." "The book is next to the toy car." This will support their understanding of spatial relationships.
Time perception
Helping children develop a sense of time requires maintaining a daily routine. This way, the child begins to understand that each activity has its own time and place. Between the ages of 4 and 5, children not only associate characteristic activities with specific parts of the day (for example, breakfast in the morning), but they also begin to describe the sequence of events. They become more aware of the order of steps in a process.
Talk with your child about what happened earlier and what happened later. Encourage them to think through the steps of daily activities: "First, we brush our teeth, and then we go to bed."
Tip: Look for activities in pictures that are typical for the morning, noon, and evening. Or observe nature together: "In spring, the tree blossomed, and later in summer, fruit ripened on it."
Speech
Between the ages of four and five, a child should be able to speak in developed sentences and complex sentences, conjugate verbs, and decline nouns. Their vocabulary is rich enough to communicate spontaneously, express their experiences and feelings, describe events, and narrate a story based on a picture. The child begins to use superordinate concepts and opposites. Work with the child on diminutives: house - little house - tiny house (dům - domek - domeček), as well as comparisons like small - smaller - smallest, and opposites like small - big, bigger - smaller.
Pronunciation improves significantly during this period. Any remaining mispronunciations are still considered within the range of normal development (physiological), but by this age, it is advisable to consult a speech therapist to determine whether it is appropriate to begin speech correction or to wait for natural development. For children with slower speech development or more extensive mispronunciations, speech therapy may be necessary even earlier.
Auditory perception
The most important factors for developing auditory perception are frequent conversations with adults, listening to fairy tales, singing songs, reciting rhymes, and doing rhythmic exercises. A child at this age can already listen to longer fairy tales. It is important to create an environment that is not oversaturated with auditory stimuli (like constant background noise from TV or radio).
Tip: Practice sound localization and differentiation. Have the child sit in the middle of a circle with their eyes closed or blindfolded. A parent, sibling, or friend can make sounds from different directions — crumple paper, ring a bell, or knock on blocks. The child must identify where the sound is coming from and what it is. You can also play a game where the child recognizes musical instruments or counts the number of sounds. To start, play one to three identical tones on an instrument, and the child places a block in front of them for each sound they hear.
Basic mathematical concepts
Manipulating objects combined with verbal instructions remains one of the most essential activities for building mathematical concepts. By this age, children already understand (passively, and many actively) concepts such as small/big, few/many, all, short/long, narrow/wide, low/high, empty/full, light/heavy, equal, smaller/larger, shorter/longer, and lower/higher. They also begin to understand concepts like less, more, some, and none.
In terms of spatial orientation, it is important to reinforce concepts such as up/down, lower/higher, front/back, first/last. By the age of five, you can begin introducing concepts like right, left, and middle.
When it comes to geometric shapes, the child can recognize a circle, square, and is starting to recognize a triangle.
Tip: Try sorting objects into at least three size categories, which helps the child strengthen their understanding of concepts like small, medium, large, smallest, and largest.
5-6 years
Motor skills
It is essential to continue supporting the child's motor development. By the age of five, a child can throw and catch a ball well, so you can play games like throwing balls into a box, tossing buttons into a bowl, or tossing rings onto a stick. Walking along a curb during a walk is also a fantastic activity.
Fine motor skills are practiced using smaller building blocks and beads. Try out various craft activities, such as sewing large buttons, threading fabric or paper with a blunt-tipped needle, making chains out of paper clips, or winding balls of yarn.
Take advantage of finger rhymes to practice fine motor skills. You can "clap" fingers together — thumb with index finger, middle finger, ring finger, and pinky — or play "the rain is falling" by tapping a table first with one finger, then with two fingers, and gradually tapping with three or four fingers. You can also rotate the wrist, "sprinkle salt" with three fingers, and so on.
Around the age of five, it is a good idea to introduce graphomotor exercises. By this time, the child should be holding a pencil with the correct tripod grip: the pencil rests on the last joint of the middle finger and is held in place from above by the pads of the thumb and index finger. The hand and fingers are relaxed and do not grip the pencil tightly, and the index finger is not bent. The pencil should extend beyond the webbing between the thumb and index finger. The pinky and ring fingers remain bent naturally in the palm.
A preschooler whose development is on track will naturally seek out activities like drawing and painting. If a child avoids such tasks, it could indicate a delay in the development of graphomotor skills. Without support, these difficulties may deepen compared to their peers. Therefore, it is advisable to seek professional guidance from educational consultants. At home, focus primarily on gross and fine motor skills, as they form the foundation for graphomotor skills. Start with drawing on large surfaces (like big sheets of paper or sidewalks) while the child sits on all fours, which helps relax the shoulder.
Tip: In the summer, draw outside on the sidewalk with chalk. You can create beautiful pictures or draw a hopscotch grid and play together.
Visual perception
By the age of five, a child should be able to name the basic colors and passively recognize additional shades. They also begin to distinguish color tones, such as light blue and dark blue. Children at this age are familiar with picture symbols and can understand more complex images. It is beneficial to continue looking at picture books, identifying and naming individual objects. Focus on small objects and partially hidden objects. Activities like tracing images that are covered with a grid or pattern are also excellent for visual perception.
At this age, you can also "play school" and use activity sheets. Look for worksheets where the child has to find the shape that differs from the others, match an object to its shadow or outline, or pair up matching objects. Children's magazines often provide great activity ideas, such as "spot the 10 differences" puzzles.
Try putting together puzzles or mosaics with your child. Visual memory can also be developed through memory games like picture-matching card games (Pexeso).
When flipping through a book, children should turn the pages from front to back, and when looking at images or letters, they should learn to observe from left to right. To reinforce this, name the objects in a picture while moving from left to right. In the preschool period, you can also include worksheets that reinforce proper eye-tracking movements.
Spatial perception
For spatial perception, direction recognition, and distance estimation, movement is essential for children — on playgrounds, during walks, and in movement games. Children at this age master spatial concepts like above/below, low/high, lower/higher, front/back, first/last and prepositional phrases like on, in, into, before/after, above/below, next to, between. They also reinforce concepts like right after, right before, left, and right. By the end of this period, children begin to understand and follow two or more instructions, such as "top right" or "bottom left." You can practice this by drawing a house with nine windows (three windows per floor) and asking, "Who lives in the top-right window?" or "Who lives in the middle window at the bottom?"
Tip: Play "Simon Says" to practice recognizing right and left sides and body orientation. For example, "Simon says, put your left hand on your right knee."
Tip: Play a treasure hunt game with closed eyes. Give verbal instructions such as "Go straight, turn right, move forward, turn around, turn left," etc.
Time perception
To help children develop a sense of the passage of time, it's crucial to maintain a daily routine so they can recognize that each activity has its time and place. Discuss parts of the day (like "In the afternoon, we'll visit Grandma"), days of the week ("Today is Sunday, and tomorrow on Monday, you'll go to kindergarten again"), and seasons ("Remember how our tulips bloomed in the spring?"). Most preschoolers already distinguish between weekdays and weekends. Children can also associate events with the concepts of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Speech
By the time they reach the age of five or six, children should have fully developed speech. They should use all types of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) and speak grammatically correctly. Pronunciation should also be accurate.
Between the ages of five and seven, minor articulation issues (known as "developmental lisping") are still considered normal. When asked, children should be able to say their first and last names, the names of siblings, friends, and parents, their age, and their home address.
Try playing games where children identify antonyms (opposites, e.g., light-dark, wide-narrow), synonyms (similar words, e.g., beautiful, pretty, gorgeous; run, dash, sprint), and homonyms (words with multiple meanings, e.g., tooth, leaf, crown).
Encourage children to predict what might happen in various scenarios (e.g., "What would happen if you went outside in your socks?" or "What would happen if a man crossed the street at a red light?"). Also, practice sequencing story events by arranging picture cards in the correct order and encouraging your child to tell the story. Talk about different professions and what people in those jobs do.
Tip: Say a list of words and ask your child to identify which one doesn't belong (e.g., dog, giraffe, stone, chicken — stone doesn't belong because it's not an animal).
Auditory perception
By this age, preschoolers should be able to recite a few poems, counting rhymes, and songs. They should also be able to listen attentively to read-aloud stories and retell them at least in general terms.
Include games that develop auditory functions needed for school readiness, like reading and writing. Focus on sound discrimination (e.g., sibilant vs. non-sibilant sounds, voiced vs. voiceless sounds, hard vs. soft consonants, short vs. long vowels), identifying the first and last sounds in a word, counting syllables in words (by clapping out each syllable), and counting words in sentences.
You can also play "word chains." The first player says, "I'm going on vacation, and I'm taking a suitcase." The next player repeats the sentence and adds an item: "I'm going on vacation, and I'm taking a suitcase and a t-shirt." Each player continues the chain, adding a new item. Another option is to play the classic game "Chinese Whispers" (Telephone), where one child whispers a word to the next, and it gets passed around the circle. The last child says the word aloud, and you compare it to the original.
Focus on the ability to filter and prioritize sounds. Read a story, and have the child clap every time they hear a specific word (like a character's name or a frequently mentioned object). Rhythmic exercises — clapping, stomping, and tapping rhythms — also help children reproduce rhythms and patterns.
Tip: Chinese Whispers (or Telephone) is a game where players sit in a circle, and one child whispers a word or phrase to the person next to them, who then whispers it to the next child, and so on. The last child says the word or phrase out loud, and everyone compares it to the original. You can start with words and later use entire sentences.
Basic mathematical concepts
Mathematical concepts are developed through a variety of previous skills, particularly motor and graphomotor skills. Therefore, it is essential to play with objects to give children experience with quantity, size estimation, and distance.
Graphomotor skills influence written expression, math note-taking, and drawing shapes. By this age, children recognize the shapes of a circle, square, triangle, and rectangle.
It's essential for children to distinguish between numbers such as 3 and 5 or 6 and 9 and recognize the symbols + and -. Language development is also crucial for mathematical understanding, focusing on concepts like none, more, less (e.g., "Don't take any beads," or "Take as many candies as your brother"). Sorting activities also foster mathematical awareness. You can sort pictures or objects into categories like toys, vehicles, clothing, animals, flowers, etc. If something doesn't fit a particular group, discuss why. Sometimes children sort using different criteria than expected — for example, you may want to create a set of trees, but the child may sort them by color. Geometric shapes can also be sorted, and you can group words by the number of syllables.
Before starting school, children should be able to count up to six, both forward (1 to 6) and backward (6 to 0). The goal is to understand the concept of number. Children over five should recognize that the number of objects in a group does not depend on their color, size, shape, material, position, or arrangement. Children who can count higher numbers (e.g., up to 50) before starting school have often learned it by rote, like a nursery rhyme, without understanding the concept. To help them grasp the meaning of numbers, practice decomposing numbers. For example, ask your child to take two beads and then find how many more beads they need to make five.
Tip: Create cards with images. The child counts how many objects are in the picture and takes the same number of objects or blocks from a box. Later, you can introduce cards with written numbers. Have a set of cards with numbers from 0 to 5 and a set with pictures containing 0 to 5 objects. The child matches the number cards to the picture cards and collects the corresponding number of real objects.
If you want to support your preschooler in a structured way before starting school, consider checking out online course Cortex kids designed to prepare children for school.
Author of the article: PhDr. Marja Volemanová, PhD.
Main sources:
Bednářová, Jiřina; Šmardová, Vlasta (2015). Diagnostika dítěte předškolního věku. Brno, Edika. ISBN 978-80-266-0658-1
Bednářová, Jiřina et al. (2017). Školní zralost a její diagnostika. Praha: Raabe. ISBN 978-80-7496-319-3
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