Preschool Age (4-6) Development Packet
You will need to know the information in this packet. You will have a quiz over it and be using the ideas. Make sure when you read it you understand it and can apply it.
Physical Development
4 – 40.7 inches 36 pounds
- 5 - 43.5 inches 40.5 pounds
- 6 - 46 inches 45 pounds
- Becomes straighter and slimmer
- Protruding abdomen of babyhood flattens
- The legs lengthen rapidly, growing straighter and firmer
- At about 6 begin to lose their primary teeth
- In general, they are lost in the same order as they came in (2 lower front teeth followed by the upper two)
- 6 year old molars (4 of them) are the first molars and permanent teeth to appear
- Some continue to comfort themselves or to handle tension
- Trying to force a child to quit can cause more problems than the habit itself
- It is best to ignore it
- Generally children stop on their own
- If it seems excessive or continuous check with a dentist if it is altering the position of teeth and shape of the jaw
- Pre-school age is very energetic
- Their favorite activities are usually physical, mostly gross motor
- They need plenty of opportunities for skill development
- Children with well-developed fine motor skills will find learning to read and write easier
- Going up and down Steps - In class activity
- By about age 5, most children consistently use either their right or left hand for most activities although it actually begins early in life
- The hand used most often becomes the most skillful
- Not sure how hand preference develops
- Heredity may be possible
- Others think it depends on which hand parents usually put objects into during the first years
- Only a few people are ambidextrous, or able to use both hands with equal skill
- There is not reason to try to influence a child to prefer one hand to another
Nutrition
- The amount of food a child needs depends on their activities, height, weight, temperament, and even the time of year.
- Snacks are not bad – if they contribute to the child’s daily nutritional needs.
- Candy, cake, and soft drinks provide the body with some energy, but do not supply many of the nutrients necessary to keep the body healthy.
- How to Teach Good Nutrition
- Teach them early in life
- Lifetime eating habits are formed at the preschool age.
- Bathing and Brushing Teeth
- It is important to establish a regular established routine
- There is decreased interest in bathing and dressing during the preschool years.
- Poor habits in cleanliness acquired at this time can continue into adulthood.
- Set example and provide encouragement
- Set up and maintain routines for bathing, washing hands, and other cleanliness habits.
- Praise works better – “You always smell so good after your bath”
- By four they no longer take an afternoon nap
- But it depends on the needs of the individual child
Social Development
Three year olds like to play in small groups of two or three. By five, children enjoy playing in groups of five to eight
They gain the willingness to give a little in order to reach a compromise, they can negotiate, or bargain, for what they want.
Cooperative play continues
Dramatic Play
Imitating real-life situations, such as playing house or school
Gender identity is developed though dramatic play.
Around age three, children begin to notice that boys and girls are physically different.
The awareness of being male or female
- By four begin to form close friendships with one or two other children, who are their “best friends”
- By five, children form close knit groups of preferred playmates.
- They can be cruel in their rejection of anyone who is not in their “group”
- Oftentimes their “best friend” changes weekly
- By six, friendships become more stable
- Conflicts
- Often over toys or personal property as preschoolers are territorial
- Around four or five, some children begin to use name-calling.
- They often direct silly, crude, or hurtful names at others
- If it becomes too frequents children need to be reminded not to do it because it hurts people feelings.
- It emphasizes how parents manage their child’s sexual and aggressive drives in the first few years is crucial for healthy personality development.
- Highlighted the importance of family relationships for children’s development
- Parents walk a fine line between permitting too much or too little gratification of their child’s basic needs
- Morality emerges between 3 and 6 during Oedipus and Electra conflict.
- By maintaining the affection of parents, children form a conscience by identifying with the same-sex parent, whose moral standards they take into their personality.
- Finally, children turn the hostility previously aimed at the same-sex parents toward themselves, which leads to painful feelings of guilt each time they disobeyed.
- Does not consider morality to be a special form of human activity that follows a unique course of development
- Instead, moral development is acquired just like any other set of responses: through reinforcement and modeling
- Develop morals that went from a self-centered focus to a higher level that focused on the good of society
- Look in History packet for the stages.
Emotional Development
- Psychoanalytic Perspective - Theories on how people develop their personality
- Freud’s Theory (Freud (1856-1939) was a Viennese physician)
- Psychosexual theory of development
- He believed that personality develop through a predictable pattern of stages. As children move through each of these stages, the source of pleasure moves to different areas of the body.
- Phallic Stage - Look in History Packet
- Erik Erikson’s Theory (1902-1994)
- A series of crises to describe successive turning points or choices that influences personality growth across the life span.
- Initiative vs. Guilt (3-5) - Look in History Packet
- 4 year olds are also very loving and affectionate.
- They seek out parental/adult approval
- 4 year olds are more intent on asserting their independence
- more self-centered, impatient, defiant, and boastful then three
- Often argue and compete
- They can wash and dress themselves, which gives them pride in their accomplishments, abilities, possessions, and creations.
- They do not want to be viewed as “babies”
- 4 year olds are also very loving and affectionate.
- They seek out parental/adult approval
- Use language with enthusiasm
- They enjoy the sounds of language
- “Antsy-Wantsy-Nancy” or some similar nonsense
- They enjoy trying out bathroom related words and seeing how others react
- They also want to talk the way adults do
- Enjoy having other people laugh at their jokes, but they dislike when people laugh at their mistakes.
- Emotionally more like 3 year olds
- Rather practical, sympathetic, serious, patient, generous, persistent, and conscientious than earlier
- Learned that others won’t accept tall tales and lies,
- They continue to enjoy slapstick humor
- Sometimes feel anxious, often out of desire to achieve acceptable results.
- Improved attention span allows them to finish what they have started, rather than moving from one thing to another.
- Conform to rules more easily
- They willingly mind their parents and teachers, most of the time
- However, adult criticism is very hard for them to take
- Emotionally more like 4 year olds
- They are stubborn and quarrelsome.
- They resent directions, and they think that they know everything.
- They are the center of their own universe and are determined to stay there
- Often the worse with their own parents
- They love and hate, accept and reject, smile and storm – sometimes for no reason
- Learn to appreciate humorous situations and jokes
- They throw themselves into their fun with the abandon that characterizes all they do
- Is a difficult age for children
- Many are in school all day
- They are faced with task of finding their status outside the home
- They long to feel grown up, but often feel small and dependents
- Crave praise and approval and they are easily hurt and discouraged
- May worry about everything from fires to the illness or death of a family member, or news about missing children.
- One expert said that more than one in three children suffers from stress.
- Can cause stomachaches, headaches, moodiness, irritability, and trouble eating or sleeping.
- Other signs of stress include problems at school, pulling away from groups, clinging to adults, stuttering, blink rapidly, tap pencils or pens, or shuffles his or her feet.
- People have differing views about the role competition should play in children’s lives.
Children benefit from competition:
- Stimulates individual effort
- Promotes higher standards
- Creates an interest in completing tasks
- Helps a child gain a realistic view of his or her own ability in relation to others
- Encourages speed in accomplishment
- Helps children excel and prepares them for the adult world
Competition harms children:
- Instills the idea that success depends on the ability to outdo others
- Leads to hostile relationships with others
- Results in lack of effort among those who never or rarely win.
- Points out children’s inadequacies
- Lowers the status and self-esteem of those who lose.
Intellectual/Cognitive Development
Preoperational Thinking (Piaget)
Children think in terms of their own activities and what they perceive at the moment
Learn that objects and works can be symbols – they represent something else
Stop sign means stop
Learn through fantasy play and dramatic play
View the world in terms of their own thoughts and feelings
When the mother of a 5 year old wasn’t feeling well, the child gave her mother her favorite stuffed animal for comfort.
Find it difficult to focus on more than one feature at a time
Learning letter & words and counting in this period – the basis of later work in school
Need to build on the concepts that the child already knows
Learning form everyday life
Talk to children about what they are doing
Questions about what they are doing help children think in new ways about what is happening and encourage them to organize their thoughts into answers
Explain things
Suggestions improve problem solving
Instead of lifting a heavy box try pushing it
How to put the carrot sticks and radishes on the serving plate and then have the child do so
Buses, trains, nature walks
Appreciating Reading/Letters
Books provide an opportunity to learn about and understand the world and the people in it.
An important factor in learning to read is the ability to hear phonemes (FOH-neems) or individual sounds in words
Rhyming words help develop this awareness
Another is through alliterations – words that begin with the same sound
Alphabet books
After children have learned the sound, they will begin to connect the letter to it
What promotes readiness for writing?
Small muscle development
Seeing Distinctions
Learning about symbols
Print-Rich Environment
Hand-Eye Coordination
If the interest in books and stories is encouraged, they are likely to enjoy reading as they grow older
Look for books that are:
Colorful, interesting, and easy to understand
Appealing to a child’s interest
The story includes action that holds the child’s interest
Uses descriptive language that brings the story alive
Short enough to read in one sitting
Different from their own experiences
City children can learn about farm life; rural areas can experience busses, apartments, and other parts of the city
Funny rhymes and unusual situations
When they giggle over the picture of a horse in the bathtub, they show that they are beginning to separate reality form fantasy.
Helps them express their feelings, control their body and show creativity
Should be encourages to experiment with art materials
Don’t correct or criticize their work
Experiencing creativity rather than the product itself is what is important
Children enjoy talking about their art and talking about it helps them build their verbal skills
“How did you make that”
“Tell me about your picture”
When Guiding Art Activities
Praise the child’s efforts
Provide carefully chosen activities
Encourage children to use art supplies
Help, but don’t take over
ALL children respond naturally to rhythmic sound, which is a part of music
3-6 year-olds enjoy rhythm games and singing simple, repetitive songs
Finger plays (“The Itsy-Bitsy Spider”), songs or chants with accompanying hand motions
Playing simple instruments helps develop children’s interests in music
Using bells, drums, tambourines, or almost anything that makes a noise (pots and spoons)
Ask children what they can do with a sound. Can they make it . . . .
Long or short?
Slow or Fast?
Loud or soft?
Different?
Starts with counting and sizes
First steps to learning math – Concepts around. . .
First and Last
Smallest and Biggest
More and Less
High and Low
How many?
All and None
Enough
Starts with basic nature concepts (animals), weather, how basic things work, colors, shapes, classifying, etc
Teaching children about color
Identify – Tell me “What color is this?”
Identify – Show me “Show me the green blocks”
Categorizing
Match shape by touching
Trace it / fill in dots/ create it
Circle is the easiest shape to create
It is vital that they develop a positive attitude about school, since they attend for many years
Negative feelings can keep them from learning well
Parents place in preschool so that they can become used to being in a school setting
Learn to pay attention, take turns, sit in various periods of time, and interact with other children
At 5 or 6 (in most schools children need to be 5 by Sept 1 or they wait the following year) they enter kindergarten
Past – ½ day kindergarten
Now – all day – Research has shown that children in full-day kindergarten programs perform better in elementary school
Starting kindergarten can be a major adjustment
It is usually bigger, than a preschool, and it has children several year older
Can help adjustment by
Making sure the child knows her or her full name, address, and telephone number
Explain what to expect at school
Be sure that the child has plenty of rest by starting an earlier bedtime a few weeks before school begins.
Let the child choose a lunch box or backpack and pick out the clothes to wear on the first day of school
With these choices, the child will link the new school to pleasant experiences
Above all, have a positive attitude
It will rub off on the child
Children, who are about to enter school have gained an extensive knowledge of language just by listening
They don’t know what nouns and verbs are but they use them correctly
All the basic language forms have already been learned in the preschool years
Their vocab should increase rapidly during 4-6 (at 6 about 2,500 words)
Articulation (clear, distinct speech) improves dramatically
3 year olds say only about 30% of their words correctly
6 year olds say about 90% of their words correctly
Depends on the physical development
Some sounds are more difficult to make than others
Sounds represented by b, m, and p are produced simply by moving the lips
By 3 most children can make these sounds
The f and v sounds, involve both the lips and the teeth.
Children may not master these sounds until 5
The most difficult sounds are those represented by j, ch, st, pl, and sl
They require the smooth coordination of the lips, tongue, and throat muscles
Some may be 6 or 7 before “pwease” becomes “please”
Children develop good language skills at home
Need to be encouraged and corrected
Reminder I need you have your forms to do the activity!!!