Nurturing Early Childhood Development

Goals for Early Childhood Development

Five Areas of Child Development:•Gross Motor Skills•Fine Motor Skills

•Verbal/Communication Skills•Personal/Social Skills•Problem Solving Skills

Laying the foundation for reading, writing, and math skills.

Laying the foundation for social skills.

Learning Through Play

• Teaches how things work.• Teaches how to interact and

share with other children.• Allows children to enter a

world of imagination.• Allows children to test things

in a safe way.• Teaches about emotions

and to talk with others.• Allows for experimenting

with art.• Promotes imaginary play.

Gross Motor Skills 12 months will bend over and pick up objects. 18 months will run and throw a ball underhanded. 24 months will walk down stairs. 36 months will begin to hop and skip and ride a tricycle.

Gross Motor Development

Gross Motor Development

Fine Motor Skills12 months eat with fingers and may begin using a spoon or fork.18 months will scribble well, and will begin to stack four blocks.24 months will open doors.36 months will wiggle thumbs and will begin getting dressed without help.

Four Stages of Fine Motor Development

• Whole arm• Whole hand• Pincher• Pincer

coordination

Activities That Promote Fine Motor Development

• Whole arm– Under the table art– Ribbons and rings– Stir it up

• Whole hand– Sponge squeeze– Lid match– Cornmeal sifting

Activities That Promote Fine Motor Development

• Pincher– Button drop– Color transfer– Using tongs

• Pincer– Capture the cork– Locks and keys– Clip it

Fine Motor Skills

• Writing progress depends largely on the development of fine motor skills involving small muscle movements of the hand.

• Muscle development for writing is a comprehensive process that begins with movements of the whole arm and progresses toward very detailed fine motor control at the fingertips.

Verbal Communication 12 months will use two

words skillfully. 18 months will string

together two word phrases. 24 - 30 months will use 50

to 70 words, make two to three word sentences and can be understood half the time.

36 months will carry on a simple conversation and use three to four word sentences. Will use between 300 and 1000 words.

Three Skills For

Communication

Development

•Understanding•Interaction•Listening

Learning Through Understanding

• Key to talking and learning.• Children need to understand what single

words mean and when words are joined together into sentences.

Suggested Understanding Activities

• Instruction Time. Children need to wait for you to say “go” and when you do they can run around, but must stop when you say “stop” and clap your hands. Can be modified to hop, jump, or any other gross motor activity. Can be done with music.

• Do what I say. Can be done with a puppet giving instructions.

Learning Through Interaction• Learning the skills of interaction is really

important for having good conversations.• We need to learn when to talk, and when

to listen, how to take turns, how to notice if someone is not listening or bored with what we are saying. We need words to do this, but also skills in looking, listening and noticing people around us.

Suggested Interaction Activities

• Playing simple games that require taking turns.

• Story Time. Share a story and predict what might happen next listening and looking at the pictures.

• Get down to the same level as the child.• Talk about what is happening in a book,

on TV, or what you are observing.

Learning Through Listening

Listening is an essential skill for

talking and learning.

Suggested Listening Activities• Listening treasure box. Collect lots of

things that make a noise. Explore and listen and talk about them.

• Spot the mistake. Sing a rhyme or song and make a mistake. Did the child hear the mistake?

• Go game. Build a tower of blocks, have a race, roll the ball, and make child wait to hear “Go” before acting.

Ways to Enhance Language Development

• Reading Predictable Books. Predictable books are books that are written in a way that makes it easy to guess what will happen on the next page. Children learn pre-reading skills. (Read top to bottom, left to right and turning pages. Learn story has beginning, middle and end)

• Children learn rhyme and rhythm• Children learn inflection.

Examples of Predictable Books• An Egg is an Egg.• Are You My Mother?• Don’t Climb Out of the Window Tonight.• I Went Walking.• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.• It Looked Like Spilt Milk.• My Very Own Octopus.• This Is the Bear.• Where Does the Brown Bear Go?• Who Sank the Boat?• Who Say That?• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See?• Llama, Llama books.

Books For Infants and Toddlers• High-contrast books.

Simple bold images. Possibly no words.

• Board books• Repetitive text books.

Children feel like they are the reader.

• Activity books. Peek-a-boo or sensory touch.

• Bedtime books.

Pre-Reading Skills• Children exposed to language early in life have

social and educational advantages over their peers. Reading in one of the best ways to expose children to language.

• Read to your child as often as you can. Try to have at least one reading time each day.

• Encourage independence by offering a selection of books and ask your child to choose one.

• Ready slowly to promote understanding.• Read expressively using different voices for

characters and raising/lowering your voice.

Pre-Reading Skills Continued• Use puppets, finger plays, or props while you

read.• Encourage your toddler to clap or sing while

you read sing-song books.• Talk about the illustrations – point to items

and name them. Ask your child to name them with you.

• Ask open-ended questions like ”Why do you think the lion is going into the woods?” or “What do you think will happen next?”

Recommended Websites

•www.pbs.org/parents/bookfinder

•www.naeyc.org Click on “For Families” tab

Personal-Social Skills12 months will offer toy if you ask for it, even if child does not let go.18 months will play with a doll or stuffed animal by hugging it.24 months will drink from a cup, and set it down, without spilling.36 months will push a wagon, stroller, or a toy on wheels steering it around objects and backing it out of corners.

Problem Solving 12 months will begin to hold an item in each hand, and clap

the toys together. 18 months will drop several small toys into a container. 24 months will see a crumb in a small, clear bottle, and child

will turn over the bottle to dump out the crumb. 36 months will watch four objects being lined up and will

imitate and also line up four object in a row.

Did You Know Music Is Beneficial:

• Because it is often shared with others in singing, dancing, and playing instruments together, it is often a social experience?

• Develops physical skills through movement, finger plays, body awareness, and bilateral coordination (crossing the midline)?

• Develops cognitive skills through counting songs, rhyme and repetition, steady beat, and memory?

• Assisting the development of language and literacy through spoken language, receptive language and phonemic awareness?

 Did You Know That Painting

At The Easel:

• Strengthens the muscles of the shoulder, arm, and hand?

• Helps to develop eye/hand coordination?

• Helps to develop small motor skills?

• Creates better hand and wrist position by using a vertical surface?

Did You Know Playing With Flubber And Play Dough:

• Allows for inclusion into a group activity that allows for parallel play?

• Strengthens the small muscles of the hand, which is a pre-writing skill?

• Improves hand/eye coordination?

• Encourages imaginative play?

• Stimulates vocabulary development, especially descriptive adjectives?

Did You Know Playing With Beads:

• Improves eye-hand coordination?

• Encourages vocabulary building, especially with colors and shapes?

• Increases math skills with concepts like, “little vs lot”, and counting beads?

Early Childhood Education

Brain science tells us the most significant learning begins at birth, not kindergarten. To improve K-12, we must create a seamless system that supplies elementary schools with children ready to learn, and that means early childhood education – not babysitting.

Statistics• By the time an average child whose parents are

on welfare reaches age 4, she has heard 32 million fewer words than a child of professional parents according to a 1995 study by researchers at the University of Kansas.

• Kindergarten teachers when surveyed about which skills are most important for entering kindergartners to experience success, teachers gave as their top answers abilities like self-care, and motor skills, followed closely by self-regulation.

Soft SkillsIn a measure of self-regulation called the Head-to-Toes Task, preschool and kindergarten age children are instructed to touch their toes when

asked to touch their head, and to touch their head when asked to touch their toes. This simple task combine three core elements of

self-regulation: attention, working memory, and impulse control. Young children who

performed well on this task in the Fall had markedly higher test scores in math and

reading the next Spring.

Childcare Facts

• In 2012 in state of Florida:• Children ages birth to 41,079,012• Children ages 5 to 11 1,519,285• Total Families with Children 1,842,338• Single Parent Families 655,581• Families in Poverty 356,913