EARLY CHILDHOOD

• Height and weight - child grows 2 and 1/2 inches in height and gains 5 to 10 pounds a year during early childhood.
• Growth patterns vary individually


  variation due to heredity and environmental experiences
• Growth hormone deficiency 


  absence of growth hormone produced in the pituitary glad to stimulate body growth; may occur during infancy or later in childhood.
• Brain


  holds the most important physical developments
• Brain - does not grow rapidly as it did in infancy
• Myelination


  increasing the speed and efficiency of information traveling through nervous system
• Age of 3 - brain is three-quarters of its adult size
• Age of 6

  brain has reached about 95% of its adult size
• Between the age of 3 to 15 


  brain undergoes dramatic anatomical changes.
• Between the age of 3 - 16


  brain's rapid growth in the frontal lobe areas that involves in planning and organizing new actions and maintaining attention to tasks.
• GMS at 3 - simple movements like jumping and running
• GMS at 4 


  kids enjoy the same kind of activities but more adventurous.
• GMS at 5

  kids are more adventuresome
• FMS at 3

  kids are still clumsy ; have difficulty positioning objects
• FMS at 4

  fine motor coordination has improved ; become more precise
• FMS at 5 


  fine motor coordination has improved further ; hand, arm, body all move together under the better command of the eye
• Sleep


  young children should have a 11 -13 hours of uninterrupted sleep each night
• Children who slept seven hours per day or less had a worse school readiness profile
• Children with a longer sleep duration were likely to have a better peer acceptance, social skills, and receptive vocabulary
• 4 yr old children who had insomnia were characterized by hostile-aggressive and hyperactive-distractible problems
• Eating habits are important aspects of development during early childhood
• Exercise


  kids should 3 hrs of physical activity per day
• Illness and death 


  children's safety is influenced by aspects of their family, home, school, peers, community
• Piaget's preoperational stage


  the second Piagetian stage lasts from 2-7 yrs of age
• Piaget's preoperational stage - children represent the world with words, images, and drawings
• Preoperational thought 


  beginning of the ability to reconstruct in thought
• Two developmental substages - the symbolic function substage and the intuitive thought substage.
• Egocentrism


  the inability to distinguish between one's own perspective and someone else's perspective
• Animism


  the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action
• Symbolic function substage - between 2 & 4 yrs old ; gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present
• Intuitive thought substage


  between 4 & 7 ; begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions
• Centration 


  limitation of preoperational thought
• Conservation task


  Piaget most famous task where children are presented with two identical beakers
• Vygotsky's Theory 


  children actively construct their knowledge and understanding
• Vygotsky's Theory


  children develop their ways of thinking through social interaction
• Vygotsky's Theory

  children's cognitive development depends on the tools provided by society and their minds that are shaped by cultural context
• The zone of proximal development


  the range of task that are too difficult for a child to master alone by can be learned with guidance from adults or more skilled children
• ZPD 


  captures the child's cognitive skills that are in the process of maturing
• Lower limit of the ZPD 


  level of skill reached by the child working independently
• Upper limit of ZPD


  level of additional responsibility the child can accept with assistance of an able instructor