What most children can do
Each list shows what about three in four children manage by that point. It is a guide to what is coming, not an exam: children arrive at these in different orders and at different speeds, and a baby born early should be measured from their due date.
Language and reading
- Tells a story with a beginning, a middle and an end
- Knows most letter sounds and blends simple three-letter words
- Recognises some common words by sight and reads a very simple sentence
- Writes their own name and copies short words
- Follows three-step instructions and asks what a new word means
Maths and thinking
- Counts to at least fifty, and counts twenty objects accurately
- Adds and takes away within ten, often with fingers or objects
- Knows what comes before and after a number, and which of two numbers is bigger
- Names the common flat shapes and continues a pattern
- Uses yesterday, today and tomorrow correctly and knows the days of the week
Body and hands
- Hops, skips and catches a bounced ball
- Holds a pencil with a three-finger grip and colours mostly inside lines
- Uses scissors to cut along a line
- Dresses alone, including buttons; laces often come later
- Manages the toilet, hand washing and a lunch box without help
Feelings and friends
- Takes turns and follows the rules of a simple game, mostly
- Has a friend they name and want to see
- Can say how they feel and sometimes why
- Copes with losing a game or hearing "no" with only a short upset
- Sits and attends to a task they did not choose for ten to fifteen minutes
What helps at this age
- Read together every night. Still. Children who are read to until eight or nine become the strongest readers, long after they can read alone.
- Play board and card games. Snakes and ladders, ludo, memory pairs: counting, turn-taking and losing gracefully in one box.
- Give real responsibilities. Laying the table, watering plants, packing their own bag. Competence is where confidence actually comes from.
- Use the ladders. Our learn-to-read and learn-maths pages put the games in teaching order, so you can find the first stage that is not yet easy and start there.
- Protect sleep and play. A six-year-old needs nine to twelve hours of sleep and about an hour of running around. Both do more for school results than any worksheet.
If you only have ten minutes a day
Get down to your child's level, put the phone in another room, and follow their lead: play what they choose, describe what they are doing, and copy them. Ten minutes of that, daily, does more than an hour of distracted company — and it is the part children remember.
When to ask a doctor
Most differences are just differences. But some signs are worth raising early, because early help works far better than waiting, and asking costs nothing:
- Speech that strangers find hard to understand
- Cannot follow a two-step instruction or retell a simple event
- Does not recognise any letters or count to ten by six
- Extreme difficulty separating, or no interest in other children
- Very frequent long tantrums, or aggression that is not easing
- Clumsiness far beyond peers, or trouble holding a pencil at all
- Loses skills they once had, or a teacher raises a persistent concern
You know your child better than any list does. If something worries you for more than a few weeks, that is reason enough to ask — you do not need to be certain. This page is general information, not medical advice or a diagnosis.
The range of normal is wide
Some children walk at nine months and some at seventeen; both are normal. Children growing up with two languages may say their first words a little later and then catch up completely, with both languages intact — do not drop the home language. Girls and boys, first-borns and third-borns, cautious children and bold ones all take different routes. What matters is steady progress in their own direction, not the date on the calendar, and never the neighbour's child.
Other ages
See every age from birth to six on the child development milestones page. For day-to-day ideas there is a twelve-week plan for parents, and for the hard moments — tantrums, sleep, biting, food — there is feelings first aid.
Now do it for real
When the screen goes off, do something with your hands. Try 🧼 Why we wash with soap — an easy science experiment for ages 3-6, with every step read aloud in your language. You will need a plate of water, a pinch of black pepper or haldi, soap on one finger; nothing that needs a trip to a shop.
There are 56 more on the things to do at home page, and free printable worksheets if you would rather have something on paper. Ten minutes on a screen and twenty minutes off it is a good shape for a day at this age.
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