Characteristics of 9-10 Year Olds
Skills Kids Need to Begin Fourth Grade
Activities and Interests
Nine year olds are absorbed in their play interests and will spend hours at their chosen activities. Children's interests begin to follow personal styles of introversion and extraversion. Many enjoy solitary play - video games, TV, reading, dolls, construction sets, or crafts. Other nine-year-old boys and girls love sports, especially soccer, baseball, football, and basketball. Most kids at nine enjoy bicycling, skating, swimming, and other forms of independent, active play, though they are not as proficient at them as they will be at ten.
Many nine year olds will begin to show a great interest in reading. With these children, no pushing is needed from parents. Simply providing the opportunity to check out library books or to buy books is all parents need to do to help the child begin a lifelong love of books and reading.
Some nine year olds are very interested in music and learning to play a musical instrument. They will readily attend lessons and practice to develop their skills. Other nines are obsessed with watching TV. Most nines know the days and times of a long list of favorite TV programs. TV programs are a frequent topic of conversation among nine year olds.
Friendships
The nine year old has good peer and family relationships. Fairness is extremely important to her. She is not as likely to blame others, but insists that everyone fairly share blame and praise. She is sensitive to criticism, however, and is easily embarrassed and upset. Cliques and bullies can be very hurtful now; so she needs to find friendships that are positive and true to cope with the peer world at school.
Nine year olds continue some interest in boy-girl relationships, though it all has a matter of fact, impersonal quality to it. There is lots of teasing, note passing, breaking up, and intervention by friends surrounding these early boy-girl relationships.
Nine year olds often have one best friend, with whom they love to talk endlessly. They are very critical of the opposite sex and boys and girls rarely play together. Organized, large group play is still enjoyed, especially baseball and soccer. They often form short-lived informal clubs, and also enjoy participating in formal clubs such as Scouts.
The nine-year-old child's relationship with his parents, especially with Mom, is much improved, though a certain distance sets in due to the eight-year old transition in self-development. Girls especially begin to get along well with siblings, and can be given the responsibility of watching a younger child. She is kinder to her younger siblings now, less likely to be strict or mean to them.
- Imaginative explorer
- developing a sense of gratitude and service
- capable of large projects and endeavors
- tests the limits
- explores meanings
- heightened sense of justice ("not fair" means "this is not the way I want it to be")
- models others
- limitless capacity to learn
- wants more freedom
- personal hygiene sometimes a problem
- worries and complains
- has mood swings
- wants much social activity
- needs to move beyond the classroom into the resources of the community
- needs a balance of rest and physical activities (time to mull things over)
- developing independence (using the local library, telephone, writing letters)
- field studies (needs to move out beyond the family and school)
- initiator of self-studies and interests
- interested in the unseen and the unknown
- moves into abstraction
- anger is often violent
- has difficulty taking a joke on himself/herself
- concerned about physical development (sometimes uncomfortable)
- plots revenge
- investigates causes of events, why things function
- becomes language dominant
Skills Kids Need to Begin Fourth Grade
- Work cooperatively in a group to complete a project
- Work independently on a multi-step project
- Show empathy and friendship skills
- Mastery of grade-level reading skills with strong fluency and comprehension
- Mastery of grade-level writing skills with accurate sentence structure and punctuation
- Library skills and use of books for pleasure and information
- Cursive handwriting with proper spacing of words and complete sentences
- Use word clues such as root words and context to identify new words
- Mastery of basic math operations
- Introduced to basic scientific thinking and facts about plant life cycles and animals in their enviornments
- Ability to use a map
Activities and Interests
Nine year olds are absorbed in their play interests and will spend hours at their chosen activities. Children's interests begin to follow personal styles of introversion and extraversion. Many enjoy solitary play - video games, TV, reading, dolls, construction sets, or crafts. Other nine-year-old boys and girls love sports, especially soccer, baseball, football, and basketball. Most kids at nine enjoy bicycling, skating, swimming, and other forms of independent, active play, though they are not as proficient at them as they will be at ten.
Many nine year olds will begin to show a great interest in reading. With these children, no pushing is needed from parents. Simply providing the opportunity to check out library books or to buy books is all parents need to do to help the child begin a lifelong love of books and reading.
Some nine year olds are very interested in music and learning to play a musical instrument. They will readily attend lessons and practice to develop their skills. Other nines are obsessed with watching TV. Most nines know the days and times of a long list of favorite TV programs. TV programs are a frequent topic of conversation among nine year olds.
Friendships
The nine year old has good peer and family relationships. Fairness is extremely important to her. She is not as likely to blame others, but insists that everyone fairly share blame and praise. She is sensitive to criticism, however, and is easily embarrassed and upset. Cliques and bullies can be very hurtful now; so she needs to find friendships that are positive and true to cope with the peer world at school.
Nine year olds continue some interest in boy-girl relationships, though it all has a matter of fact, impersonal quality to it. There is lots of teasing, note passing, breaking up, and intervention by friends surrounding these early boy-girl relationships.
Nine year olds often have one best friend, with whom they love to talk endlessly. They are very critical of the opposite sex and boys and girls rarely play together. Organized, large group play is still enjoyed, especially baseball and soccer. They often form short-lived informal clubs, and also enjoy participating in formal clubs such as Scouts.
The nine-year-old child's relationship with his parents, especially with Mom, is much improved, though a certain distance sets in due to the eight-year old transition in self-development. Girls especially begin to get along well with siblings, and can be given the responsibility of watching a younger child. She is kinder to her younger siblings now, less likely to be strict or mean to them.