The growth and development of children of early age should be one of society’s key priorities. Many very talented and dedicated individuals have been attracted to join this educational field as teachers, administrators, and various other educational related occupations for this very reason. It is important as we continue to press forward, that the field of early childhood development attracts the best and brightest as these kids will be the future pillars of society. It is as simple as that. Those who we often gaze upon as just young, bubbly, energetic kids whose early childhood development stages seems to unfold without much notice are literally the future shapers of our world. And part of the challenge going forward it to create in the minds of our educators a much better sense of what the learning progressions children experience as they age and how teachers can play to this reality by way of dovetailing their teaching techniques with the natural progression of childhood development. We are going to explore this topic and its role in how and why children learn at the rate that they do and possibly at the end of this assessment everyone will have a somewhat better idea of the the early childhood development stages chart and how understanding this progression can help amplify the effectiveness of the teacher’s efforts in the classroom
Stages of Early Childhood Development
This notion of there being clearly defined early childhood stages of development is generally a product of many years of study, theory, and educational outcomes in the classroom. While there is general agreement on what these stages consist of and when they likely emerge, there is a good deal of interpretation and some disagreement on what is normal in terms of a child’s grow as defined by their cognitive, emotional, psychological, physical, and social development. Children are known to progress at different rates and the milestones they are expected to achieve can be done so at varying rates, yet still fall well within the range of what people may consider normal.
The typical early childhood development stages charts will divide the metrics into general categories such as as a certain age child should achieve certain milestones in such areas as cognitive skills, social, motor skills, language skills (speech), vision, and hearing. As you will see from the link provided below, these are a series of behavioral descriptions that presumably will help one in ascertaining where the child is in achieving the milestone. The thought is that by certain ages, children should be exhibiting certain behaviors as described in the chart. Immediately, many parents and educators who have had first hand experience with children and how they learn and respond to the environment around them will tell you that the chart and others like it should be used only as a guideline as there are endless examples of children progressing at different rates, sometimes speeding up or slowing down as they grow older.
To gain a better understanding of these stages of early childhood development, feel free to visit this link at http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/devmile.htm.