Speech and Language Traits of the
Five-Year-Old

At age five, your child will…

• Define objects by their use (you eat with a fork) and can tell what objects are made of
• Know spatial relations such as “on top,” “behind,” “far,” and ‘near”
• Know his address
• Have a sentence length of five to six words
• Have a vocabulary of about 2,000 words
• Uses speech sounds correctly
• Know common opposites like “big/little” and “hard/soft”
• Understand same and different
• Count ten objects
• Use future, present and past tense
• Questions for information
• Use all types of sentences, some of which will be complex
• Put things in order to facilitate comparison
• Carry on conversation like and “adult”

You can stimulate the five-year-old’s speech and language by…

• Encouraging the child to use language to express feelings, ideas, dreams, wishes and fears
• Commenting on what you did or how you think the child feels, as will encourage more talking
• Allowing the child to create new, free designs with crayons, pencils and paper
• Allowing opportunities to learn songs, rhymes or verses from memory
• Continuing to read longer stories
• Talking with the child as you would an adult in most instances
• Remembering the child will still understand more than he or she would be able to say
• Listening to the child when he or she talks to you

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