Which developmental milestone is a four-year-old child likely to achieve with confidence?

The ability to count items in a bag is a developmental milestone that a four-year-old child is likely to achieve with confidence. At this age, children typically start to develop their numeracy skills, including counting. They can usually count to ten or more and can understand the basic concept of one-to-one correspondence, which means recognizing that each item counted corresponds to one number.

Counting physical items like those in a bag helps children to practice these skills in a tangible way, making the learning process engaging and relevant to their everyday experiences. This milestone represents a foundational step in the development of math skills, setting the stage for more complex mathematical concepts they will learn later on.

In contrast, understanding advanced math concepts is beyond the developmental scope for four-year-olds, as is reading on their own, which typically emerges later in their educational journey; they may be able to recognize letters or simple words but cannot read independently. Additionally, completing a science project is often too complex for a child of this age, as such projects usually require not just cognitive skills but also the ability to follow multiple-step processes, which may not yet be fully developed in four-year-olds.