EARLY

CHILDHOOD
What is Early
Childhood
Development?
• Early childhood development refers to the
many skills and milestones that children
are expected to reach by the time they
reach the age of five. These milestones
include learning how to run, how to talk
using simple sentences and how to play
with others.
• In most cases, this type of development
occurs naturally when parents and children
spend time playing, preparing dinner or
looking at books together. Preschools and
head start programs provide activities based
on early childhood development guidelines.
You can also find toys and books for both
children and parents that promote
developmental goals.
• Early childhood is a time of remarkable
physical, cognitive, social and emotional
development. Infants enter the world with a
limited range of skills and abilities. Watching a
child develop new motor, cognitive, language
and social skills is a source of wonder for a
parents and caregivers.
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
I. BODY GROWRTH
A. Changes in Body Size and Proportions
1. On the average, 2 to 3 inches in height and
about 5 pounds in weight are added each year.
2. The child gradually becomes thinner; girls retain
somewhat more body fat, whereas boys are
slightly more muscular.
3. Posture and balance improve, resulting in gains
in motor coordination.
4. Individual differences in body size are even more
apparent during early childhood than in infancy.

5. To determine if a child's atypical stature is a sign of

a growth or health problem, the child's ethnic heritage
must be considered.
B. SKELETAL GROWTHS IN WHICH CARTILAGE

1. Between ages 2 and 6, approximately 45 epiphyses,

or new growth center hardens into bone, emerge in
various parts of the skeleton.

2. X-rays permit doctors to estimate children's skeletal

age, the best available measure of progress toward
physical maturity.

3. By the end of the preschool years, children start to

lose their primary teeth.

4. Childhood tooth decay remains high.

C. ASYNCHRONIES IN PHYSICAL GROWTH

1. Physical growth is an asynchronous process: different body

systems have their own unique, carefully timed patterns of
maturation.

2. The general growth curve is a curve that represents overall

changes in body size-rapid growth during infancy, slower
gains in early and middle childhood, and rapid growth
once more during adolescence.

3. Exceptions to this trend are found in the development of

the reproductive and lymph systems.
•Centration involves focusing on one aspect of
a situation and ignoring the others. It is
common in early childhood.
• Decentration -the opposite of centration is when
a person is paying attention to multiple aspects
of a situation.
• Conservation refers to the ability to determine
that a certain quantity will remain the same
despite adjustment of the container, shape, or
apparent size.
MOTOR SKILL
DEVELOPMENT
• Developmental milestones are abilities that
most children are able to perform by a certain
age. During the first year of a child’s life,
physical milestones are centered on the infant
learning to master self-movement, hold objects
and hand-to-mouth coordination.
 FROM BIRTH TO 3 MONTHS
• At this age, most babies begin to:
Use rooting, sucking and grasping reflexes
Slightly raise the head when lying on the stomach
Hold head up for a few seconds with support
Clench hands into fists
Tug and pull on their own hands
Repeat body movements
 From 3 to 6 Months
At this age, babies begin to
develop greater agility and
strength. They also begin to:

• Roll over
• Pull their bodies forward
• Pull themselves up by
grasping the edge of the crib
• Reach for and grasp object
• Bring object they are holding
to their mouths
• Shake and play with objects
 From 6 to 9 Months
• During this time, children become increasingly
mobile. They usually begin to:
• Crawl
• Grasp and pull object toward their own
body
• Transfer toys and objects from one hand to
the other
 From 9 to 12 Months
In addition to the major milestones such as
standing up and walking, children also begin
to develop more advanced fine-motor skills. In
this window of development, most babies are
able to:
• Sit up unaided
• Stand without
assistance
• Walk without help
• Pick up and throw
objects
• Roll a ball
• Pick up objects
between their thumb
and one finger
 From 1 to 2 Years

Children become increasingly independent

and this age and tasks requiring balance and
hand-eye coordination begin to emerge.
During this stage of development, most
children are able to:
• Pick things up while standing up
• Walk backwards
• Walk up and down stair without assistance
• Move and sway to music
• Color or paint by moving the entire arm
• Scribble with markers or crayons
• Turn knobs and handles
 From 2 to 3 Years
Building on earlier skills, children become
increasingly adept at activities that require
coordination and speed. From one to three
years of age, most kids begin to:
 From 3 to 4 Years

Physical abilities become more advanced

as children develop better movement
and balance skills. From age three to
four, most kids begin to:
• Ride a tricycle
• Go down a slide without help
• Throw and catch a ball
• Pull and steer toys
• Walk in a straight line
• Build a tall towers with toy blocks
• Manipulate clay into shapes
 From 4 to 5 Years
• Jump on one foot
• Walk backwards
• Do somersaults
• Cut paper with safety scissors
• Print some letters
• Copy shapes including squares and
crosses
CHILDHOOD ILLNESS

• Cough or difficult breathing

• Diarrhea
• Fever
• Ear problem
INTELLECTUAL
DEVELOPMENT
Language/intellectual development

• Crying is main source of communication (when wet, hungry,

frightened, uncomfortable, or lonely)
• Make gurgle throaty sounds by 4 months
• Babbles and coos
• Looks when name is called
• Imitates sounds
• Repeats interesting actions
• Continues to develop eye-hand coordination
 PIAGET'S THEORY THE
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE
A. THE PREOPERARIONAL,PIAGET’S
SECOND STAGE, IS MARKED BY
RAPID GROWTH IN
REPRESENTATIONAL, OR
SYMBOLIC, MENTAL ACTIVITY.
B. ADVANCES IN MENTRAL
REPRESENTATION
1. Language is our most flexible means of
mental representation.
2. Piaget believed that sensorimotor activity
provides the foundation for language, just
as it under lies deferred imitation and
make- believe play.
C. MAKE-BELIEVE PLAY
1. Make-believe play increases dramatically
during early childhood.
2. Piaget believed that through pretending,
young children practice and strengthen newly
acquired representational schemes.
3. Development of Make-Believe Play
a. Over time, play becomes increasingly
detached from the real-life conditions
associated with it.

b. Make-believe play gradually becomes less

self-centered as children realize that agents
and recipients of pretend actions can be
independent of themselves.

c. Play also includes increasingly more complex

scheme combinations.
d. Sociodramatic play is the make-believe play
with peers that first appears around age 2 1/2
and increases rapidly until 4 to 5 years.

e. The emergence of sociodramatic play signals

an awareness that make-believe play is a
representational activity.
D. SPATIAL REPRESENTATION

1. Spatial understanding improves rapidly over the

third year of life. With this representational capacity,
children realize that a spatial symbol stands for a
specific state of affairs in the real world.

2. Insight into one type of symbol-real world relation,

such as that represented by a photograph, helps
preschoolers understand others, such as simple maps.
3. Providing children with many opportunities
to learn about the functions of diverse symbols,
such as picture books, models, maps, and
drawings, enhances spatial representation.
E. LIMITATIONS OF PREOPERATIONBAL
THOUGHT

1. Piaget described preschool children in terms

of what they cannot, rather than can,
understand.

2. Operations are mental representations of

actions that obey logical rules.
3. In the preoperational stage, children's
thinking is rigid, limited to one aspect of a
situation at a time, and strongly influenced
by the way things appear at the moment
4. Egocentric and animistic system
Egocentrism is the inability to distinguish
the symbolic viewpoints of others from
one's own.
Animistic thinking is the belief that inanimate
objects have lifelike qualities, such as thoughts,
wishes, feelings, and intentions.

5. Inability to Conserve.
Conservation refers to the idea that certain
physical characteristics of objects remain the
same, even when outward appearance
changes.
6. Transductive Reasoning.
Transductive reasoning is reasoning from
one particular event to another particular
event, instead of from general to particular or
particular to general.
7. Lack of Hierarchical Classification.
Hierarchical classification is the
organization of objects into classes and
subclasses on the basis of similarities and
differences between the groups.