Early Childhood Development

Introduction

Children not only grow in size. Develop, evolve and mature the mastery of increasingly complex understanding of people, objects and challenges in their environment. There is a general pattern or sequence of development that occurs in most children. However, the rate, character and quality of development vary from child to child. Culture influences development in different ways, and the goals for children differ from one culture to another (Kathleen, 22).

Early childhood

As currently used at international level, early childhood is defined as the period of the life of a child from conception until the age of eight years. There are two reasons for the inclusion of this age range within a definition of ECCD. First, this time frame is consistent with the vision of developmental psychology of the continuum of child development.

Children below the age of eight learn best when they can manipulate objects, when they have opportunities to explore the world around them, when you can experiment and learn from trial and error within a safe and stimulating environment. At about the age of nine years beginning to see the world differently. You can manipulate ideas and learn the mental concepts and are less dependent on objects. Thus, in terms of learning theory, birth to age eight years period shows a continuous development (Kathleen, 22).

Secondly, the international definition of early childhood includes the first years of primary education (ages six and eight) because of the importance of the transition for children whether at home or from a pre-school program in elementary school. If preschool programs for children are effective, there must be some connection between what happens in kindergarten and junior primary. This does not mean that early childhood programs should be a formal experience for young children. Rather, there is a need for early elementary teachers become more aware of the experiences, skills and knowledge that children bring with them to primary school if they have had an experience of early childhood programs.

Cognitive development

This area defines the child's ability to think, process information, learn and solve problems. There are several theories that describe the skills and processes associated with children's learning and are taught in schools today. These skills and information processing are: object permanence (the ability to understand that objects and events continue even though the baby is no longer in contact with them), attention, symbolic play, imitation, conceptual ability, habituation (the repeated presentation of the same stimulus that reduced attention in time), and memory.

Several development tests are used today and were developed on the basis of these theories. Some of the most common tests are the Bayley Scales of Infant Development and the help list. These tests assessing auditory and visual attention of the baby, the manipulation of objects and toys, the interaction with the examiner and imitation, memory involved in object permanence (how to find hidden toy), the goal-directed behavior continuing involvement (such as parity games, classifier form), ability to follow instructions, knowledge of the names of objects and concepts of understanding (such ...