Teach English in Zhanglan Zhen - Jinzhong Shi

The baby's birth is indeed a happy and exciting moment for each family. However, at first, many parents are severely stressed due to lack of knowledge about child development. Child development is a matter of concern to all parents (and later teachers). How to help baby to develop in the right way? How to notice problems in development? When and what methods to use to make the child grow up healthy, intelligent, curious? How to understand what is typical at a specific age? Although all the kids are different, the patterns of their physical, emotional, and cognitive development are generally the same. The development of a child occurs abruptly: periods of calm, systematic research of the surrounding world and the acquisition of new skills are replaced by so-called age crises. In times of crisis, parents may even think that their child has been 'replaced' - that is how his behavior changes. Child development is the sequence of physical, language, thought and emotional changes that occur in a kid from birth to the beginning of adulthood. During this time, a child progresses from dependency on their parents, to increasing their independence. Of course, child development is strongly influenced by genetic factors, environmental facts, and the child's learning capacity. Child development covers many skills that kid will need during his life. It includes development in: • Cognition – the ability to learn and solve the problems; • Language and speech – understanding and using language, reading and communicating; • Emotional regulation and social interaction – interacting with other kids or people and developing of self-control; • Sensory awareness – the registration of sensory information and using this information in life; • Physical skills – development of fine motor skills (fingers) and gross motor (whole body) skills. Also, child development can be divided into a few age groups: • Child development from birth to one-year-old; • The development of young children from one year to three years; • The development of children from three years to seven years old; • The development of older children (from seven to eleven years old); • The development after eleven years old. There is a specific set of skills that most children learn in each of these age group. By the first year of their lives, a child can imitate an adult, building a pyramid or tower with blocks, opening boxes, putting toys into them and getting them back. The kid can show his feelings, recognizes relatives, and becomes disturbed at the sight of strangers. Actively imitates adults in facial expressions, actions, intonations. The child can repeat a familiar sound or a new word for an adult; also, he/she can know about ten words. A child in a year understands the speech of an adult: requests, prohibitions. He knows his name and reacts to it. By the year a child can stand without support and is already beginning to walk either with help or himself, can crawl very well. A feature of the period from one year to three years old is the active learning of speech. If a baby operates about ten words when he/she is one year old, by the end of the second year of life, this number usually increases to two hundred, and by the age of three years in the child's dictionary, there are already more than one thousand words! Naturally, the quality of mastering the native language, vocabulary, and correct pronunciation depends on how parents communicate with the child. The development of children and their speech at this time depends entirely on parents. From three to seven years, there is a creation of personality, the development of social roles, and the formation of self-esteem. The preschool development of a child proceeds intensively, and the end of this period is admission to the school. The speech development of a child of preschool age is characterized by the continued rapid growth of vocabulary, as well as a gradual improvement in the pronunciation of sounds. Gradually increases the complexity of the sentences. If in three-four years the child mostly uses simple common sentences (I put on a beautiful dress), then by five years old he masters complex sentences, making short stories of them. Six-seven years old is a good time to start to learn a second language, for example, English, of course, if the kid lives in the non-English country. The younger school age covers the period from seven to eleven years, which corresponds to grades 1-4. On the one hand, the child still retains some childish traits (for example, continues to be naive and frivolous), but on the other hand, it acquires a different logic of reasoning, value, and lifestyle. The development of older children is also affected by the fact that learning in school becomes their main activity. In this period, the teacher becomes a significant part of the life of every kid. When a child goes to school, he takes on a new social role - the role of the student, and the child's development in social terms moves to a new level. The child spends not so many time with parents and more with teachers, who must help kids to feel comfortable in a new place for him. Observing and monitoring child development is a vital tool to ensure that children have their developmental skills that believed to be mastered at the same time for all children, but that is far from exact. From its very birth, the child learns a tremendous amount of knowledge and skills in various areas of life. How its development will proceed, for the first time, depends on the parents but then on the teachers, as well. It is vital to be attentive to the baby and to know what he/she is predisposed. Knowledge of the basic patterns of mental, physical, creative, social development, and their correct application is the key to success and comfort for the child, parents, and teachers.