M6 Early Childhood

• Characteristics of Early childhood: rapid growth in the areas of language and cognitive development; have more control over their emotions; begin to pursue a variety of activities that reflect their personal interests
• Parents continue to be very important in the child’s development, but now teachers and peers exert an influence not seen with infants and toddlers.
• early childhood is also preschool years, ages 2 to 6
• Characteristics of Early Childhood by Hurlock: Name used by parents (problem age, toy age), name used by educators (preschool age), name used by psychologists (pregang age, exploratory and questioning age, imitative age, creative age)
• Problem age –stubborn, disobedient, negativistic, and antagonistic
• toy age spend much of waking time playing with toys ( until 11 years of age)
• Preschool age –go to nursery, school, or kindergarten
• Pregang age – learning the foundations of social  behavior
• Exploratory  and questioning age –want to know what their environment is, how it works, how it feels, and how they can be a part of it
• Imitative age –imitating the speech and action of others
• creative age showing creativity in playing
• early childhood is the ideal age to learn skills
• during early childhood they enjoy repetition until they attain the ability to do well. They do not worry when they are ridiculed by peers.
• Physical development during early childhood: The child gains height at the average rate of about 3 inches per year, the shedding of temporary teeth is more advanced in girls than in boys,  wide variation in the number of hours of sleep recommended per day.
• Children at the end of this early childhood stage generally have a height of 3 feet and 6 inches.
• During the 4 to 6 months of early childhood, the last four baby teeth-the back teeth- erupt. During the last half-year, the baby teeth begin to be replaced by permanent teeth. The first to come out is the front central-the first baby teeth to appear. When early childhood ends, the cold generally has 1 to 2 permanent teeth in front and some gaps, where permanent teeth will eventually erupt.
• two-year-olds may still need 15-16 hours of sleep per day, while a six-year-old may only need 7-8 hours
• brain development during early childhood process: bones of the skull are loosely connected by membranes, ample space is left between the edges to allow growth; Myelination and the development of dendrites continue to occur in the cortex and greater development in the prefrontal cortex; Furthermore,  between the ages of 3 and 6, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere continues to grow. Lastly, the corpus callosum undergoes a growth spurt between ages 2 and 6.
• Piaget is convinced that children are curious, active explorers who play an important role in their own development.
• According to Piaget, the most significant advance of the preoperational stage is the ability to form mental images and use of symbols.
• the first sign of the advancement of preoperational stage is Deferred imitation and the development of language is the cornerstone
• characteristics of preoperational thinking by Piaget: intuition, egocentrism, magical thinking, centering, appearances
• • intuition, or the ability to imagine solutions to problems without resorting to physical trial and error;
• • egocentrism, or difficulty understanding that the other people see things from different angles;
• • magical thinking, or the belief that inanimate objects have thoughts and feelings, all events are motivated, and dreams are real;
• • centering, or the inclination to focus on one dimension or feature, ignoring others, and to concentrate on present states rather than on transformations;
• • the tendency to be seduced by appearances;
• Vygotsky reminded us that cognitive growth is best understood when studied in the social and cultural contexts in which it occurs. His theory is sociocultural theory
• Vygotsky's sociocultural theory emphasizes social and cultural influences on intellectual growth.
• Vygotsky proposed that we should evaluate development from the perspective of four interrelated levels in interaction with children’s environments— microgenetic, ontogenetic, phylogenetic, sociohistorical
•  left hemisphere ( involved in language skills)
• right hemisphere( involved in tasks that require spatial skills)
• microgenetic (refers to changes that occur over relatively brief periods of time), ontogenetic (refers to the development of the individual over his or her lifetime), phylogenetic (refers to changes over evolutionary time, measured in thousands and even millions of years), and sociohistorical (refers to the changes that have occurred in one’s culture and the values, norms)
• problem solving is also called its tools of intellectual adaptation
• culture teaches children what to think and how to go about it
• Children acquire cultural beliefs, values, and problem-solving strategies in the context of collaborative dialogues with more skillful partners within their zone of proximal development. Learning occurs best when more skillful associates properly scaffold their intervention.  Much of what children acquire from more skillful associates occurs through guided participation—a process that may be highly context-independent or may occur in the context of day-to-day activities.  
• Language development depends on learning rules for combining and altering words in meaningful ways (syntax). Children progress from one-word utterances to two-word "telegrams," to more complete phrases (at age 21/2 or 3)
• Skinner have argued that children learn syntax  through imitation and others like Chomsky believed that children are born with an "innate grammar."
• 6 to 11 months- Understands "no-no"
• Birth to 5 months-Coos