This study explores young children’s language development using the Japanese word game “Shiritori,” which is popular among this age group and occasionally serves as a developmental assessment tool. We defined a child as capable of playing Shiritori if they could sustain the game for at least three turns. Our findings show that success rates in Shiritori increased progressively from ages three to six. We calculated the ages at which 50%, 75%, and 90% of children could pass Shiritori as 56.2 months (four years and eight months), 64.4 months (five years and four months), and 71.8 months (six years), respectively, indicating that most children are capable of playing Shiritori by around age six. In a second study, we tracked 26 children who played Shiritori annually from the three to five-year-old classes. We categorized the words they used during the game. Initially, the most common category was “animal.” As children aged, they increasingly used words from broader categories such as “toy/play,” “food/drink,” and “vegetable/fruit.” These results suggest that children can play Shiritori by around age five and use a diverse vocabulary across different categories.
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