MODULE 15

Preschooler’s Physical Development

 The Preschool years is commonly known as the years before formal schooling begins. It roughly
covers 3-5 years of age.
 At around 3 years of age, preschoolers move from the remaining baby-like features of the
toddler toward a more slender appearance of a child. The trunk, arms and legs become longer.
 The center of gravity refers to the point at which body weight is evenly distributed. Toddlers
have their center of gravity at a high level, about the chest level. This is why they have difficulty
doing sudden movements without falling down. Preschoolers on the other hand, have their
center of gravity at a lower level, right about near the belly button. This gives them more ability
to be stable and balanced that the toddler.
 By the time the child reaches three years old, all primary or deciduous, or what are also called
baby or milk teeth are already in place. The permanent teeth which will begin to come out by
age six are also developing. The preschool years are therefore a time to instill habits of good
dental hygiene.
 Gross motor development refers to acquiring skills that involve the large muscles. These groas
motor skills are categorized into three:
o Locomotor skills – are those that involve going flrom one place to another like walking,
running, climbing, skipping, hopping, creeping, galloping and dodging.
o Non-locomotor skills – are those where the child stays in place like bending, stretching,
turning, and swaying.
o Manipulative skills – are those that involve projecting and receiving objects like
throwing, striking, bouncing, catching and dribbling.
 Fine motor development refers to acquiring the ability to use the smaller muscles in the arm,
hand and fingers purposefully. Some of the skills included here are picking, squeezing, pounding
and opening things, holding and using a writing implement.
 Viktor Lowenfeld studied the preschooler’s artistic development and came up with the stages
of drawing in early childhood.
o Stage 1: Scribbling stage – this stage begins with large zig zag lines which later become
circular markings
o Stage 2: Preschematic stage – may already include early representations. At this point
adults may be able to recognize the drawings.
o Stage 3: Schematic stage – more elaborate scenes are depjcted. Children usually draw
from experience and exposure.
 It is important for preschoolers to get sufficient amount of rest and sleep. Preschoolers benefit
from about 10-12 hours of sleep each day. It is when they are asleep that vital biological
processes that affect physical and cognitive development take place.

MODULE 16
Cognitive Development of Preschoolers

 Two substages of Piaget’s preoperational thought:

o Symbolic stage – preschool children show progress in their cognitive abilities by being
able to draw objects that are not present by their dramatic increase in their language
and make-believe play.
 o Intuitive stage – preschool children begin to use primitve reasoning and ask a litany of
questions. The development in their language ability facilitates their endless asking of
questions.
 While preschool children exhibit considered cognitive development, their improved cognitive
process still show some aspects of immaturity or limitations:
o Preschool children believe that inanimate objects have life-like qualities and are capable
of action. This is referred to as animism.
o Preschoolers have the inability to distinguish between one’s own perspective and
someone else’s perspective. This is called egocentrism.
o Centration is the focusing on or centering of one’s attention on one characteristic to the
exclusion of others. This is also referred to as unidimensional thought. This is also an
evidence of preschool children's lack of conservation, the awareness that the basic
property of an object or a substance is conserved even if its appearance changed.
o Because the preschool child pays more attention to the strikingly conspicuous
peripherals, they miss the more relevant and more important features needed in
problem solving or in task performance.
o Irreversibility is Piaget’s term for a preoperational child’s failure to understand that an
operation can go in two or more directions.
o Preschool children do not use deductive or inductive reasoning, instead they jump from
one particular to another and see cause where none exists. This is called transductive
reasoning.
 A preschool teacher would often observe how a child in preschool has transformed from a
dependent toddler into a proud and independent preschooler who can now eat more neatly,
enjoy ‘reading' a book, tell his stories among friends, build beautiful block structures and wear
his jacket all by himself.
 Brain research ha pointed out the crucial role of the environment in the cognitive development
of preschoolers. Experts have shown specific areas of brain activity that respond to
environmental stimulation. Therefore the brain forms specific connection (synapses) that are
different from each person.
 As they advance in age and as they continuously interact with people, preschool children expand
rapidly in their vocabulary through fast mapping, a process by which children absorb the
meaning of a new word after hearing once or twice in conversation.
 Vygotsky believed that young children use language both to communicate socially and to plan,
guide, and monitor their behavior in a self-regulatory fashion – called inner speech or private
speech.
 Vygotsky asserted that preschool children are unable to achieve their highest cognitive
development on their own and that they can improve their cognitive development through use
of scaffolding from more skilled children and adults.
o He introduced the term zone of proximal development (ZPD) to refer to tasks too
difficult for a child to master alone but can be mastered with the guidance and
assistance of adults or more skilled children.
o Closely linked to the idea of ZPD in cognitive and language development is the concept
of scaffolding, a term that refers to the changing support over the course of a teaching
session, with the more skilled person adjusting guidance to fit the child’s current
performance level.
 The information processing model conceptualizes children’s mental processes through the
metaphor of a computer processing, encoding, storing and decoding data. Rehearsal and
 organizing information are deliberate mental activities that can be employed to improve the
processing of information.
 Theory of mind refers to individual’s thoughts about how mental processes work. By the age of
2 or 3, children become aware that the mind exists. Cognitive terms such as know, remember
and think usually appear after perceptual and emotional terms, but are used by age 3. Theory of
mind includes awareness of one’s thought processes, social cognition, understanding that
people can hold false beliefs, ability to deceive, ability to distinguish appearance from reality
and ability to distinguish fantasy from reality.
 Learning about how preschoolers think and learn, one will realize that parents and teachers can
do a lot either to help preschoolers develop their cognitive skills or impede them.
 Two prominent organizations that have position statements about the appropriate practices in
the care and education of preschoolers are the National Association for the Education of Young
Children (NAEYC) and the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI).

MODULE 17
Socio-Emotional Development of the Preschooler