At 5 years 

Children can usually:

• Follow three part instructions (e.g., put on your shoes, get your backpack and line up outside).
• Understand time related words (e.g., ‘before’, ‘after’, ‘now’ and ‘later’).
• Start thinking about the meaning of words when learning.
• Understand instructions without stopping to listen.
• Begin to recognise some letters, sounds and numbers.

When it comes to speaking, children can usually:

• Use well formed sentences to be understood by most people.
• Take turns in increasingly longer conversations.
• Tell simple, short stories with beginning, middle and end.
• Use past and future verbs correctly (e.g., ‘went’, ‘will go’).
• Use most speech sounds, but still may have difficulties with ‘s’, ‘r’, ‘l’ and ‘th’.

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