Teach English in Fenggeling Zhen - Baoji Shi

Early child development is a holistic process that all humans experience when start growing and gaining different skills and abilities through a certain period of time. The best way to understand this, could be by going back to the early fresh days of newborns and observing some changes once they start growing up and interacting with their families, and friends in a particular cultural surrounding. Early Child development is often described as the biological and emotional changes that occur when humans begin to grow up or develop through time, and in order to delve into these important changes, it is necessary to look closely at the children’s developmental stages or milestones and their stages related to children’s age: According to Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, it suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development: sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years), preoperational stage (ages 2 to 7), concrete operational stage (ages 7 to 11), formal operational stage (ages 11 and up). This categorization is besides more commonly known as follows: Infants from birth to 2 years, Toddlers from 3 to 5 (early childhood) and 7 years of life, and from 7 to 11 years this preadolescent group is called Preschoolers, and finally, school-age children for 11 years and up. There should be considered 4 key areas in child development which are likely to develop gradually: cognitive area, physical area, social & emotional area, and language area. The cognitive area explains thinking skills and problem solving as well as reasoning; on the other side physical development refers to the gross and fine motor skills along with sensory perception; social and emotional area studies the understanding of feelings and empathy with their peers and getting along with people, and finally the language area which is mainly focused on communication issues. Child development is a holistic process that involves many complex processes which will define the future of a particular child in his / her adulthood. Let’s take a look at all these factors and what changes take place in a specific developmental stage: Sensorimotor / Infants: In their first 3 months of age little babies like focusing on face, eyes and mouth movement of the caretaker, their physical development is not much, and spend most of time lying on their tummy. During 3 to 6 months of age they start rolling over and trying to reach up objects and bring it to their mouth to experience the texture of that object. From 6 months to 1 year, infants develop more cognitive skills like the object permanence, for example; if an adult were to hide or cover an object that the baby has previously seen, the baby will know it is hidden or covered by something, so he or she will go to find it and uncover it, before this time the little baby is unaware of this object presence. Preoperational /Toddlers. category form 12 months to 3 years (in early childhood), but also goes through 7 years of age. They are called toddles because they are just learning how to walk in this age group. 12 to 18 months they become more mobile, and will explore their surroundings. They want to try things out, use objects in different ways, like using a block as a car. In their physical development. They will start using utensils at a table, their control won’t be great, so they will return to using their hands. Now, from 18 months to 2 years, they can start riding on a bike because their gross motor skills start developing and big muscles are growing. At 2 to 3 years, they can hold utensils much better, these children can get dressed by themselves but with some difficulty to do the buttons on a shirt for instances. In their emotional side, these children tend to be egocentric, it means they want they want, and they want it now!! they do some parallel play alongside, it means they play alone. At 18 months 2 years of age, start developing empathy, and during 2 to 3 years young kids start regulating their emotions. In language development, they use more gestures to communicate, they understand more than they can say, and if they can say anything, they say a word to refer a sentence, for example; the word “toilet” when a kid means “I want to go to the toilet”. Concrete operational / Preschoolers. At 7 years of age kids at this stage of development start becoming interested in math’s and start counting, use their logical thinking, and often like lining up objects. Another accomplishment is that kids begin to follow steps, and memorizing basic commands. Preadolescents between ages 7 to 11 can demonstrate logical and concrete reasoning. Children's thinking starts becoming less egocentric, and these young adolescents become more aware of external events, begin to realize that one's own thoughts and feelings are unique and may not be shared by others or are more in the realm of imagination. Operational / school-age. Adolescents who get up to this stage of intellectual development are usually able to logically use symbols related to abstract concepts. Subjects such as algebra and science appreciation are welcome to help children to develop abstract thinking. Kids at this age can think about multiple variables, formulate hypotheses and thinking of possibilities. They are also ready to make relationship about abstract concepts like justice, money, etc... and can make judgments of values of what they are surrounded by.