What is child development: Child development studies children’s changes over time as babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children grow.
There are different areas of development to look at: physical, intellectual, language, emotional, and social.
Physical development: Physical development is the development of fine and gross motor skills, muscle development, the changes that occur as a child grows, etc.
Intellectual development: Intellectual development is the development of memory, perception, spatial reasoning, cognition, imitation, and many other mental processes.
idiom: Linguistic development is the development of linguistic skills in receptive and expressive language, including gestures, reading and writing, grammar, etc. in this area.
Emotional development: Emotional development is the development of oneself. Self-concept, personality, emotions, self-control, etc.
Social development: Social development is the development of forming relationships with those around them. How a child associates in the associative game, the solitary game, the parallel game, the relationships with the people that surround him, the places and also the environmental functioning, etc.
When you are programming for preschool children, it is very important to plan as many activities as possible in which children can develop and improve skills in these particular areas.
Here are some examples of some learning activities you can plan for each different area:
Physical development: As mentioned earlier in the description, this area involves fine motor skills and gross motor skills. Gross motor activities can include outdoor activities like riding a bike, playing catch, playing tag, hopscotch, building a snowman, basically anything that gets kids using their muscle groups. larger than their bodies. Creative movement is also included in a gross motor activity.
Fine motor skills would consist of anything that involves the small muscles primarily in your hands and fingers. Some examples of activities for fine motor skills would include arts and crafts time, cutting with scissors, gluing small objects, coloring, tying activities, playing with play dough, turning the pages of a book, or any small object toy for children to use. manipulate them. .
Intellectual development: Activities for this area would include matching games, memory games, puzzles, setting up the dramatic play area with different themes, color sorting, size sorting, being able to tell the difference between what is real and what is fantastic, etc.
language development: This area will require a little more effort on your part during circle time, small group time, and during routines like bath time, lunch time, etc. Singing songs throughout the day and repeating them for children to learn and copy is a very fun and effective way to get children comfortable with the use of words. Using songs with simple sign language or just funny gestures will also allow children to express themselves.
During the lunchtime routine, be sure to pronounce the names of the foods correctly and ask questions to encourage a response. For example, “Anne, do you want more chicken?” If the child nods and refuses to answer out of shyness or lack of language skills, she responds by saying, “Yes, please, would you like more chicken.” It may seem a bit out of the ordinary at first, but as you do this every day, you’ll see children copy what he says by trying to sound out the words he’s using.
Books that have familiar pictures would be great to put in the library, as well as pencils and blank paper for them to experiment with putting marks on the paper, whether they are in the early stages of printing or not.
Emotional development: Emotional development is very important for children. This area helps them express their feelings, their emotions, their needs and desires. This can be done by arranging real life activities, such as a house center for dramatic play with real life objects. Putting books on feelings in the library is great for readers and non-readers alike. Non-readers will be able to look at and understand the images and associate what they see with their personal feelings.
Planning activities around the family is also a great activity. Children can draw pictures of their families and what they have, where they live, the pets they have, etc.
At circle time, you can also talk about feelings and sing feeling songs like “if you’re happy and you know it.”
Place pictures of people with different emotions around the classroom, in the dramatic play center, etc. You could even cut out people/children with different emotions from magazines and put them on the art shelf.
Social development: There are no specific activities you can plan for social development, but what you can do is purposefully organize activities and provide play environments that place children in different social settings. For example, the dramatic play area typically has 2 or more children playing at a time. This allows children the opportunity to share, swap roles, and play in a social setting.
Another example would be playing with clay. The children can be sitting next to each other, but they have their own ball of clay. They will participate in parallel games. This setting gives children the opportunity to play side by side while still participating in their own activity.
Solitary play is also an important part of the game, even if the child is not playing with anyone. Solitaire play is important. Some children do not have the ability to play alone and use their imagination. Setting up small areas for one child to play at a time is very important, especially if you see that they are not playing alone on the mat or in the play area. An example of this would be placing a puzzle on a table with a chair so that one child at a time can go and play with it.
Another example is trying something different, like getting a tray, putting some small toys on it, and putting it on a table or rug for one friend to play with at a time. If you notice that a child is having difficulty playing alone, encourage him to play in these areas and even spend a few minutes with him to get him comfortable with the activity. Feel free to withdraw from the activity when the child is comfortable playing alone.
Remember when programming, be creative, keep it simple and look at what the kids seem to be interested in and expand on it.
Have fun!