Most children will:

• Follow directions involving 3 or more steps - "First get some paper, then draw a picture, last give it to mom".
• Use adult-type grammar.
• Tell stories with a clear beginning, middle and end.
• Talk to try to solve problems with adults and other children.
• Demonstrate increasingly complex imaginative play.
• Be understood by strangers almost all of the time.
• Be able to generate simple rhymes - "cat-bat".
• Match some letters with their sounds - "letter T says "tuh".

Four-year-olds like it when you:

• Give them lots of opportunities to play with other children - at the library, the park, the Early Years Centre. Sometimes they like having just one or two friends over to your home to play.
• Point out words in books and run your finger under words while you read them.
• Talk about the order of events - describe what happens first, next and last - "first we wash our hands, then we have a snack, and last we put our dishes in the sink".
• Encourage them to tell their own stories - by asking them to tell you about their day, to describe a movie they watched, to tell you about their favourite book.
• Read books with rhyming words - "mouse/house", and point out sounds at the start of words - "Mommy starts with the "mmm" sound - that's the letter M".

Source: Your preschool child's speech and language development. Government of Ontario, 2007.