Early Childhood

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
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 Introduction

• For every developmental stage,

there is an expected
developmental task. What
happens when the expected
developmental task are not
achieved at the corresponding
developmental stage? How can
you help children achieve these
developmental tasks?
 Development
• Is defined as the process of
change in which the child
comes to master more and
more complex levels of doing
things, learning relationship
with self and others, and
dealing with people and
objects in his/her
environment.
 Early Childhood
• Early childhood, defined as the
period from birth to
eight years old, is a time of
remarkable growth with brain
development at its peak. During
this stage, children are highly
influenced by the environment
and the people that surround
them.
Early Childhood
Development

• Refers to the different

skills and milestones
that children are
expected to reach by
the time they reach the
age of 5.
Early Childhood
Development
• Emphasizes a holistic
approach on the child’s
physical/motor,
cognitive/language, personal-
social/emotional, and moral
development.
Early Childhood
Development

THERE IS A
GENERAL PATTERN
OR SEQUENCE OF
DEVELOPMENT
THAT IS TRUE OF
MOST CHILDREN.
Physical Changes During Early Childhood
Children in early childhood are physically
growing at a rapid pace. If you want to have fun
with a child at the beginning of the period, ask
them to take their left hand and use it to go over
their head to touch their right ear. They cannot do
it. Their body proportions are such that they are
still built very much like an infant with a very
large head and short appendages. By the time the
child is five years old though, their arms will have
stretched, and they head is becoming smaller in
proportion to the rest of their growing bodies.
They can accomplish the task easily because of
these physical changes.
Physical Changes During Early
Childhood (GROWTH)

Children between the ages of 2 and 6 years tend to

grow about 3 inches in height each year and gain about
4 to 5 pounds in weight each year. 
The average 6-year-old weighs about 46 pounds and is
about 46 inches in height. The 3-year-old is very similar
to a toddler with a large head, large stomach, short
arms, and short legs.
During early childhood, children start to lose some of
their baby fat, making them less like a baby, and more
like a child as they progress through this stage.
By around age 3, children will have all 20 of their
primary teeth, and by around age 4, may have 20/20
vision. Many children take a daytime nap until around
age 4 or 5, then sleep between 11 and 13 hours at night.
Motor Skill Development
Visual Pathways

Have you ever examined the drawings

of young children? If you look closely,
you can almost see the development of
visual pathways reflected in the way
these images change as pathways
become more mature. Early scribbles
and dots illustrate the use of simple
motor skills. No real connection is
made between an image being
visualized and what is created on
Figure 1.These drawings demonstrate the progression
paper. in both drawing skill and visual processing during early
childhood. The top left drawing is done by a 2-year old,
and the bottom right image is drawn by a 7-year old. 
 Motor Skill Development

Remember that gross
motor skills are voluntary
movements involving the
use of large muscle groups
while

https://youtu.be/W0697717ZdU
 Motor Skill Development

Early childhood is a time when children are

especially attracted to motion and song. Days
are filled with moving, jumping, running,
swinging and clapping, and every place
becomes a playground. Even the booth at a
restaurant affords the opportunity to slide
around in the seat or disappear underneath and
imagine being a sea creature in a cave! Of
course, this can be frustrating to a caregiver,
but it’s the business of early childhood.
Children may frequently ask their caregivers to
“look at me” while they hop or roll down a
hill. Children’s songs are often accompanied by
arm and leg movements or cues to turn around
or move from left to right. Running, jumping,
dancing movements, etc. all afford children the
ability to improve their gross motor skills.
 Motor Skill
Development

Fine motor skills are

more exact movements
of the hands and fingers
and include the ability to
reach and grasp an
object. Early childhood is
a time of development of
both gross and fine motor
skills.
 Motor Skill Development

Fine motor skills are also being refined

in activities such as pouring water into
a container, drawing, coloring, and
using scissors. Some children’s songs
promote fine motor skills as well (have
you ever heard of the song “itsy, bitsy,
spider”?). Mastering the fine art of
cutting one’s own fingernails or tying
their shoes will take a lot of practice
and maturation. Fine motor skills
continue to develop in middle
childhood, but for preschoolers, the
type of play that deliberately involves
these skills is emphasized.
Childhood illness
•Teething problems
•Dry skin and rashes
•Ear problems
•Fever
•Chicken pox and
measles
•Bumps and bruises
•Coughs and colds
Intellectual Development
Intellectual
Development

•Age group 2-6 years

•Period of rapid physical mental,
emotional, social and language
development
• Cognitive Development is the emergence of the
ability to think and understand.
• The acquisition of the ability to think, reason and
problem solve.
Piaget-
Cognitive
• It is the process by which people’s thinking Development
changes across the life span.
• Piaget studied Cognitive Development by
observing children, to examine how their thought
processes changed with age.
How Cognitive Development occurs?
• Cognitive Development is gradual and
orderly changes by which mental process
becomes more complex and sophisticated.
• The essential development of cognition is
the establishment of new schemes.
• Assimilation and Accommodation are both
process of the ways of Cognitive
Development
• The equilibrium is the symbol of a new
stage of the Cognitive Development.
 The Four Stages of Development
• Infants construct an understanding of the
world by coordinating sensory experiences
(seeing, hearing) with motor actions
(reaching, touching)
• Develop Object Permanence (memory)-
realize that objects exist even if they are out
of sight.
• Infants progress from reflexive, instinctual
actions at birth to the beginning of problem
solving (intellectual) and symbolic abilities
(language) toward the end of this stage.
 Preoperational Stage (2-7 yrs)
-Toddler and Early Childhood
• This stage begins when the child starts to
use symbols and language. This is a period
of developing language and concepts. So,
the child is capable of more complex
mental representation (i.e., words and
images). He is still unable to use
‘operations’, i.e., logical mental rules, such
as rules of arithmetic. This stage is further
divided into 2-substages:
 Preoperational Stage (2-7 yrs)
-Toddler and Early Childhood
• Preconceptual Stage (2-4 yrs.):
Increased use of verbal representation
but speech is egocentric. The child
uses symbols to stand for actions: a toy
doll stands for a real baby or the child
role plays mummy or daddy.
 Preoperational Stage (2-7 yrs.)
-Toddler and Early Childhood
• Intuitive stage (4-7 yrs.) : Speech
becomes more social, less
egocentric. Here the child base
their knowledge on what they feel
or sense to be true, yet they cannot
explain the underlying principles
behind what they feel or sense.
 Egocentrism- The Symbolic Function
Substage
Egocentrism occurs when a child is unable to
distinguish between their own perspective and that
of another person’s.
Children tend to pick their own view of what they
see rather than the actual view shown to others.
An example is an experiment performed by Piaget
and the doll. Three views of a mountain are shown,
and the child is asked what a travelling doll would
see at the various angles; the child picks their own
view compared to the actual view of the doll
 Animism
• Treating inanimate
objects as living ones. eg:
children dressing and
feeding their dolls as if
they are alive.
 Concrete Operational Stage
(7-12 yrs)
Childhood and Early Adolescence

• Seriation: The ability to sort

objects in an order according to
size, shape or any other
characteristics. E.g., giving
different-sized of an objects
they may place them
accordingly.
 Transitivity
• Transitivity: The ability to
recognize logical relationships
among elements in a serial
order. E.g.,: If A is taller than B
and B is taller than C, then A
must be taller than C.
 Decentering

The ability of the child to

perceive the different features
of objects and situations
• Jean Piaget: Theory of Cognitive Development (slideshare.net)

https://slideplayer.com/slide/14708753/