Children learn best when they’re interested and engaged. Make an effort to meet with your child’s teachers and stay informed of what they’re learning.
A quality education can help kids grow into confident, self-respecting adults who know what they want from life and how to achieve it. But a good education is about more than earning potential.
Social and Emotional Development
Having healthy social and emotional development equips children with skills for learning. It helps them build trust, develop empathy and communicate effectively – essential building blocks for lifelong success.
This process starts at birth with the bond between a child and her caregivers. It continues through the relationships children forge with teachers and other adults in their lives.
A strong foundation in social and emotional skills allows children to regulate their emotions, focus attention and manage impulses – all important prerequisites for learning (see the Science Brief on this topic). It also helps them build close, satisfying relationships with other people and develop a positive self-image.
Teachers use noninvasive teaching strategies to help children learn these skills – such as using positive statements, giving hugs and high fives, demonstrating how to calm down and encouraging them to try new activities. For example, a child may sort materials into groups that can be used to decorate or that can be built with (classifying). They also practice math concepts like counting and identifying shapes.
Physical Development
Developing healthy physical development helps children stay active and reduces their risk of diseases like obesity and cardiovascular disease. In addition, a physically active child is more likely to have a positive attitude towards learning and a more enquiring mindset.
For example, infants’ and toddlers’ physical development allows them to explore their environment and use motor skills that facilitate cognitive development such as understanding the cause and effect of actions, like pushing a button to hear a sound. Similarly, preschoolers’ physical development supports their exploration of math concepts and science, like sorting materials into groups, observing shapes and textures in nature, or clapping out beats to songs.
As a program leader, your knowledge of physical development will help you guide direct-care staff and families in helping children reach developmental milestones. You will also be better prepared to respond to concerns from family members and staff about physical problems or limitations and make sure the programs you run are accessible to all children.
Cognitive Development
Cognitive development is a child’s ability to process, understand and use information. It includes reasoning, memory and problem-solving skills.
Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, proposed that children have distinct stages of cognitive development, starting with the sensorimotor stage (0-2 years), which he defined as learning through direct observation and interaction with the environment. He explained that this stage is a period of discovery and growth in which kids create an understanding of the world through basic mental frameworks called schemas. These schemas grow in number and complexity as kids experience discrepancies between what they already know and new discoveries. This stage is also known as the preoperational stage.
During the preoperational stage, kids develop symbolic thinking skills and begin to recognize that one object can stand for another (such as using their stuffed animal to play “house”). They also become less egocentric, realising that other people think differently from them. Kids also begin to logically think about concrete events and problems, the concrete operational stage.
Language Development
Children need to learn language, and that’s more than just talking. Language development includes many other things, such as the phonology, or the sequence of sounds that make up words; semantics, the meanings of those words; syntax, or how those sounds are arranged in sentences; and morphology, the use of grammatical markers to indicate tense, active or passive voice, etc. These different components of language develop at different times, and children need lots of direct input from adults to kickstart this process.
In the holophrastic phase of language development, children begin to build full and grammatically correct sentences. They also start using a wider vocabulary and showing understanding of grammar rules such as plurals, verbs, and the use of pronouns. Their ability to convey meaning and relate their ideas also improves. This is an exciting time for both parents and children, and it is the stage when children show a great interest in communicating with others, especially with their caregivers.