Child Development Criteria

It is very important for a child to be school ready. This prepares them taking into consideration future grades to come. They must reach certain milestones and develop their skills well enough to pass each grade and move on to the next (Davin, 2013).

1. Criteria to determine school readiness:

There are basically 5 main criteria’s that we were taught to follow when working with the child’s development. These criteria were given the acronym of ‘PMS EC’, this simply stands for:

a) Physical Development- This is where the child is developed through hands-on-tasks and free play as well. The child gets to develop their gross and fine motor skills in this development area (Davin, et al, 2005). They also develop their perceptual skills which helps

It maybe because she is young than her grade R classmates. She relies on her teacher’s support for most of the day. However, she is a well- liked girl.

• Emotional development:

Annalize is the only child in her home, she does not get enough attention from her parents, as they are always busy. She is a quiet yet friendly girl. But she is always anxious. She is independent when it comes to following daily routines but, she must be encouraged to carry out group leader responsibilities for the day. She often gets frustrated when she has difficulty in performing cutting and pasting activities. She has good manners and is an independent child with a little push.

• Cognitive development:

She finds it difficult to concentrate. The child is easily distracted yet she does try very hard. She enjoys listening to stories but because she is easily distracted she cannot focus on the whole story and this affects her comprehension. Annalize is an Afrikaans spoken learner. She does have difficulty with basic rhyming skills, her English vocabulary is limited. She struggles to follow instructions and to clearly verbalise her thoughts in English. However, she finds mathematical concepts easy to grasp, she is competent to classify and compare different manipulatives. She can also complete a 30-piece puzzle. She also is often found paging through books in the book

A fun game to practice this skills is the button sorting cups game.

If the child has troubles when it comes to reading, spelling, handwriting, math and comprehension, this just might be because of their visual perceptual skills, being able to establish and understand the information seen and give it a gist (le Roux, 2009). A good activity for children to practice their visual perceptual skills is the matching game.

It is important for learners to understand the language you teach in. Our universal language and language taught in schools is English. Therefore, it is a compulsory subject and is taught from small. Language can be learnt through communication and listening (Wikipedia, 2010). The make your own word game is fun and children will really enjoy it.

Numbers are a part of a child’s everyday life. Showing the child how it is incorporated in their daily life is an exciting task. Numbers are the key to basic mathematical concepts. The child should be taught the number and its word (Davin, 2013). A good game for children to learn counting, would be to take them out. Have them play the finding my 10 stones or pebble