Childhood Observation

As adults we use shapes every day, although we may not realise it. Think about when we are arranging furniture, cleaning out the cupboard or fridge, this is all done by arranging according to the shapes that are in them; road signs and markings make extensive use of different shapes, helping us to identify them before we can actually read them. When a child explores different shapes, they are using basic educational development; the observation of same and different. This concept provides them with a basic process that they will be able to use in observing, comparing and discussing all that is seen and encountered. This resource will aid students in year one develop the skills to differentiate various shapes by recognizing their key features.

This time of a child’s life is best characterized as a time of rules and roles. Children between the ages of 7 to 10 finally get control of themselves physically and begins to enjoy active games, manipulating small objects (age 7), beginning group sports, organized indoor games (age 8), climbing trees, walking rails (age 9). These children are in the process of building physical confidence, they know who they are and that they control certain parts of their environment, but not other people. They still need adult attention, but they are more willing to abide by pre-determined limits and boundaries. (Goldberg, 1974)

Physical: Activities and age appropriate material will be instituted to encourage the child 's fine and gross motor skills. A broad spectrum of tasks, challenges, and curriculum will be introduced. Larger motor skills are developed through strength exercises including, but

The infants advance in areas such as going from needing support to sit at six (6) months of age to almost walking, or sometimes walking independently, at twelve (12) months and from reaching or grabbing at a toy to playing independently with toys. They understand more. They are learning to think, figure things out, and copy the behaviors of others. Strength is increasing and they are gaining control of their muscles and body movements. They are balancing better and learning their surroundings and what is a safe place and surface to crawling, pulling themselves up, or walking. They can judge and assess situations before going ahead and crawling or walking on a sloped surface. The gross motor movement behaviors that I observed are comparable with the general descriptions in our text Child Development (Santrock, 2014).

Watson (2012) defines physical development as the process that starts in human infancy and continues into late adolescent concentrating on fine and gross motor development. Fine motor development involves more finely tuned movements such as grasping, building bricks and gross motor development involves larger movements such as walking, climbing, climbing stairs and riding bicycles.

Cognitive development is the process that leads to the emergence of the ability to think and understand (Siegler, DeLoache, Eisenberg, & Saffran, 2014). This process involves the “development of thinking and reasoning” (Siegler et al., 2014, p.15) throughout childhood, including the growth of capabilities such as “perception, attention, language, problem solving, reasoning, memory, conceptual understanding, and intelligence” (Siegler et al., 2014, p. 131). Children contribute to their development through self-initiated activity even before they are born, by practicing breathing and digestive processes and exercising

In the contemporary times, great importance is given to the significance of early years of a child’s life. It is widely acknowledged now-a-days that the early childhood years are a predominantly receptive phase in the developmental process. This stage is responsible to lay a foundation in early days and later years for cognitive functioning, learning process, physical wellbeing, and self-regulatory capacities in both personal and social lives. In simple words, “the period from birth to age 5 is one of opportunity and vulnerability for healthy physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development” (Karoly, Kilburn & Cannon, 2005). However, it is also a fact that many children go through several stressors during their developmental years due to which their healthy development may be impaired. For this reason, early childhood intervention programs are devised for the mitigation of the possible factors that threaten children’s positive outcomes. Such intervention programs also play a major role in supporting parents and families of the children. These programs may provide support through learning activities or further planned

Cognitive abilities enable children to process the sensory information that they collect from the environment. According to Wood, Smith and Grossniklaus (2012), Piaget defined cognitive development as the progressive reorganization of the mental processes that results in biological experience and maturation. As numerous researchers have explained, children normally undergo many changes from birth to adolescents, most of them being growth related. According to Cook (2005), the changes in thinking is what researchers call cognitive development. In toddlers, cognitive development is observed through the early use of tools and objects, the child’s behavior when objects are moved in front of them and their understanding when objects and when people are in their environment. As observed with Taylor, he could easily tell that someone new had come in his house and he did not respond to me the way he responded to his mother. Cognitive development during childhood plays a vital role in their future abilities and

At the age of twelve-months, I was at the stage of development when walking was a natural milestone to achieve. According to Piaget, I was in the tertiary circular reaction substage of sensorimotor development, which is a time for trial-and-error experimentation (Bee et al., 2018). Walking is part of human nature and all children who develop normally will begin progress toward walking at this age, as it is part of our nature. Nurture, however, was also a factor in my personal experience of learning to walk, as it took intervention of the environment to encourage me to take my first steps. My parents coaxed me to walk toward them by holding shiny objects in my view, verbally praising and calling for me, and using gestures, which is an example of how the environment can have an effect on childhood development. Nature and biology dictated that I was developmentally ready to walk, and the nurturing of my environment supported me in taking my first

According to Cynthia Lightfoot, author of “The development of the children”, “young children’s fine motor skills improve notably and early childhood is marked by impressive gains in both gross and fine motor skills”. Daniel’s

it is important to consider the reliability of the information that we gather and also

Throughout the year we have learned about many different theorists who have done a great but also horrible job at explaining adolescent/ young adult development. In this paper I will be talking about Freud and Piaget, and how I think that Piaget was the better theorist than Freud when it comes to talking about development. I will also be talking about the similarities and difference between the two. For starters, what are their specific steps of development?

According to developmental psychology a person at any age is at a certain stage of cognitive, moral, psychosocial, and physical development. This development is measured by different types of thinking, mental capacity for tasks, physical strength, and reasoning for following rules. Development is easily seen in children. Naturalistic observation is the one of the easiest method to see these developments in children. This is the observation technique I used, while watching a five year old male at Kindercare Daycare at 3:30 on a Friday. I did my observation after the children had a recess period and came inside for a snack and play time. While observing the male child it was obvious to see where he was in cognitive, moral, psychosocial, and physical development.

Through research on child development, researchers understand the characteristics of the principles that follow. There are two principle of development cephalocaudal, proximodistal According cephalocaudal, development progress from the head downward. The child first gains control of the head, then the arms, then the legs. In first three months after birth infant’s gains control of head and the face movements. In next few months they can lift themselves up using hands. Between 6 to 12 months start gain leg control, crawls, stand and walk. According to proximodistal principal, development also proceeds from the center of the body outward. First the spinal cord develops and rest of the parts next. Arms develop before the hands, and the hands and feet develop before the fingers and toes. Fingers and toes are the last to develop. Maturation play major role on devlopmment. Maturation means, sequance of biological changes in children there changes gives new abilities. And it depends on changes in the brain and the nervous system. These changes in brain support children in improving their motor skills and thinking. Children to develop to their potential rich learning environment is required. Children must mature to a certain point before they can gain some skills. For example, the brain of a six-month-old has not matured enough to allow the child to talk. A six-month-old will babble and coo. However, by three years of age, with the help of others, the child will be able to say and understand many words. This is how cognitive development occurs from simple tasks to more complex tasks. In the same way physical skills also develop from general to specific movements. For instance, the way an infant waves its arms and legs, these moments are random. Several months after birth infants will grab the object with their whole hand. After little more months they grasp the object with

Having the right knowledge, skills and experience in understanding how children or young people develop are very important tools for early years practitioners. We must put to mind that each child born to this world is unique; they are born with different characters and their personalities and behaviours are formed and influenced by variety of factors. These factors may affect their ways of interacting to the environment and community or setting in which they live in.