Age Differences in Development in Early Childhood Education - Case Study Example

Age differences in development Introduction The development of a child is a process of becoming biologically and psychologically independent and mature. This building process is an ongoing, continuous and dynamic process. The progress is a directional step towards increasing autonomy of an individual from dependency. These transformational changes are strongly influenced by genetically determined factors like overall growth, changes in proportion of body and brain parts, and mellowing certain tasks like vision and dietary needs. The specific characteristics occur in a particular sequence and within a specific period. The developmental process can be boosted or nurtured by manipulating various events during prenatal life, and physical, social, cultural, learning and emotional areas through environmental stimuli (Ashford et al., 2001). The developmental domains should be gazed and grasped carefully to understand the overall growth of the child. This helps in unfolding abilities of each child. Then, accordingly efforts should be made so that, the child is encouraged to learn and evolve. Bringing together all the development aspects, lead to flowering of a child. Another important angle to study developmental process is to address issues such as developmental delay. The study of typical chronological ages associated with specific physical and mental capabilities help in prevention of and early intervention in developmental delay. The development studies are focused on issues related to physical and motor development, social and emotional development, cognitive development, etc. Therefore, development is a cumulative effect of all the developmental stages and domain. The growth of the child should be healthy and appropriate in each developmental sphere. Though the developmental timelines can vary greatly from child to child, it gives overall picture of growth chart (von Hahn, 2005a). The differences in development between toddlers (1 to 2 years) and pre-school aged (4 to 5 years) children by developmental stage are compared as follows. Physical and motor development Motor skills are the abilities required in order to mobilize muscles of the body. Proficiency in other developmental domains like (speech/language, cognition, and socio-emotional) are connected to acquisition of Motor activity. The physical and motor developmental change follows age wise particular pattern. Gross motor skills are referred to the movements of the large muscles of the body like arms, legs, feet, or the entire body. Activities related to gross motor skills are easy tasks like running, jumping etc. Fine motor developmental skills are related to manipulating and controlling objects with small movements of the hands, wrists, fingers, feet, toes, lips, and tongue Activities related to fine motor skills are holding an object, tasting with lip and tongue. More complex skills can be acquired easily by subjecting child to result oriented environmental stimuli (von Hahn, 2005b). Gross motor skills Toddlers The Toddlers learns variety of gross and fine motor skills. 1 year child begins to stand without support for longer duration and walk with someone’s help. When child becomes 1 year 3 months old he is able to walk without help and crawls up stairs. 18 months old learn to associate basic motor skills like standing, walking, sitting with one another. He can walk while pulling a toy and may walk backward also. He can sit and use tools to eat. He runs stiffly. He is able to climb stairs holding on to a railing with one hand. 2 years child runs well and able to kick the ball. He can walk up and down the stairs putting both feet on each step before going on to the subsequent step. He learns to toilet. Thus, by the age of two years, children have become aware of individual tasks (vonHahn, 2005a; vonHahn, 2005b). Preschoolers Four-year-olds can climb up and down the stairs with alternating feet without assistance, hop, stand on one leg one foot, jump forward and backward over objects, catch and throw ball. They become aware of the success of an individual effort which causes happiness. They become physically very active. Childs brain growth and development slows down. Preschoolers build confidence in their physical capability but have to watch for overconfidence and wrong activities (CYH, 2005). Fine Motor skills Toddlers During this period, toddlers learn to associate basic motor skills to accomplish advanced developmental skills. The child develops a knack of grasp or holding of object and coordinates the task with visual and spatial skills. 13 months old child starts to stack a tower of cubes and twist the phone dial.15 months old able to lift up cup, drink it without spilling and put it back. The child develops good grasp of the object and able to manipulate them. A knack of holding of object is associated with visual and spatial skills. Then, slowly at the end of 2 years, the child becomes good at turning pages of a book, can put on socks, string large beads, drawing with crayons, play with clay etc (von Hahn, 2005b). Preschoolers Preschoolers try to control and master the fine motor skills which require more patience. As the age progress they are able to dress up without help, tie shoelace, cut with scissor, write letters etc. Now their drawing and coloring is more matured. They are able to differentiate and correlate shapes, colors etc (Hahn, 2005b and CYH, 2005). Social and emotional development The type of responses to circumstances is same of every normal child and is in-built behavior of every individual. But, there is a great variation in the intensity or expressiveness of emotions. If a person is in sad mood, every normal child will show concern and sympathy, but the magnitude of feelings is different. As the development progresses the child is able to understand gradually about the attachment between the people, social norms, expression of behaviour etc. Positive healthy relationships are building blocks of healthy development (Bagdi and Vacca, 2005). Toddlers Toddlers start to sense the individuality and separate entity than their parents. Toddlers are promoted to develop sense of self recognition. Socio economical development starts on the individual level through social experiences. Their sense of ownership does not allow them to share their toys with others. Though the toddlers are dependent on their parents, they want to direct their tasks on their own. If they are not able to do certain desired tasks, they become inpatient, easily frustrated, and unable to control their feelings. The children at this age start getting acquainted with simple emotions like anger, sadness, happiness, sympathy etc. When the child behaves well stating positive remark on his/her conduct reinforces the good behaviour of child. When their emotional needs are well attended they start to gain secure feeling, develop positive emotional bonds and also start developing trust and confidence. Preschoolers Preschoolers begin to understand the nature of social norms. Inquisitive preschooler explores ways of social attachment. They are eager to know the relations. They are very loquacious and amicable. So they can make friends easily with other children. They love to whisper and like to keep secrets. In order to get love and caring from others constantly they try to do things to please others. They share their toys and participate in all the activities. But when their wants are not given priority they become egoistic and cranky. They always want to control and win over others. When they get criticize, they feel unsecured. If elders contradict themselves they tend to show their mistakes. They want to try everything on their own. They find joy in helping others and become cooperative. But if certain tasks are insisted they may not like it to do. They are able to understand fundamental feelings and emotions. They easily grasp the cause and effect of basic behaviour. They become sensitive and apply principles of emotions in their games also. They are able to express anger, happiness, depression etc very clearly (MDCH, 2003). Cognitive development The cognitive development is the emergence and acquisition of intelligence by development of thought process. The progression of knowledge is proportional to maturity of thought process. Thought process involves perception, intuition, and reasoning. Cognitive development leads understanding of a particular concept and it increases problem solving capacity. Generally, the cognitive behavior is related to inbuilt intelligence. But it can be boosted by external stimuli. According to Piagets cognitive development theory, the cognitive behavior is influenced by maturation of the nervous system, experience, social transmission of information or teaching and equilibration (Geary, 2004; Hurley, 2005). Toddlers According to Piagets cognitive development theory (Huitt & Hummel, 2003), toddlers are at the "sensorimotor" stage of cognitive development. It emphasises on elementary thought process. The concept of object permanence is fully developed. Toddlers start mentioning common names of the objects and people. They are able to identify body parts. They show ability to imitate animal sounds and imitate their parents’ behaviour. The children of this age group try to follow simple instructions and understand meaning of simple words like please, thank you, sorry etc. They try to chase objects in motion. They observe carefully patterns and regularities in day to day activity (Davies, 2004). Preschoolers According to Piagets cognitive development theory (Huitt & Hummel, 2003), preschoolers are at the "preoperational" stage of cognitive development. The children of this age group are able to draw familiar pictures about which they have certain impression in their mind. They try to interpret what they see and hear and then attempt to link information or data. They act or pretend to read and write. They make up and tell stories which may or may not have meaning. The child enjoys playing with soft toys, dolls etc; and treats them like a real living creature. They also believe in magical play. They start building up their memory skills as well as increase their concentration span. The children at this age can identify and sort out shapes, letters, numbers and colours. They are able to differentiate between similarity and differences between the two objects. Sometimes to identify the correct sequencing can be a problem. They start to distinguish between real and implausible events. They are very curious to know meaning of words. They start showing their reasoning ability and logical power. They may show refusal and start opposing actions like talking back to adults, lying, and bullying (Public health agency of Canada, 2005; Hurley, 2005). Language and communication development The language and communication development is a coordinated effort of the child and the surrounding stimuli. The language is not only vocabulary but the knowledge of meaning of words, structured sound for conveying linguistic meaning and use of language in different contexts. Toddlers When child enters into his second year he starts understanding simple words and short sentences and responds to you conversation. He starts expressing his language skills by speaking few words. 18 months toddler masters around 20 words and his/her vocabulary increases to around 200 words at the end of 2 years. Toddler starts combining verbs or prepositions with nouns to make two word sentences. By 2 years of age he is competent enough to combine simple words and may speak few logical sentences with little improvement in pronunciation. His communication skills are improving daily by active participation in conversation. He enjoys answering small questions (Shelov, 1998). Preschoolers When child enters into his fifth year he starts asking questions like why, when, how, where etc. Proper communication becomes very important to the child since he is going to enter into kindergarten programs. By five years of age the child is able to speak like adults using complex sentence including relative clauses. Since their recalling power is also improving they are able to sing rhymes, tell long stories. Their communication skills are becoming sophisticated. Preschooler experiments his language skills and explores the power of words. Some children might able to reorganize the words which sounds poetic. He can change his pitch, modulate his voice. They may use commanding language sometimes. The child is able to pick up different languages skills also. She is interested in telling about things that happened to her. She is able to ask clearly what she wants. She shares her dreams and fantasies. The child enjoys simple jokes and silly language. They like to chatter all the time and redirecting their efforts with proper interaction may boost spoken as well as written language skills (Shelov, 1998). Conclusion The developmental domains are approximate representation of the age progression. These developmental milestones are broad spectrum of benchmarks to evaluate kids progress. The genetic and environmental factors interact and act as stimulant for development of the individual. Mixed age groups in early childhood education. Introduction In early childhood education, the term ‘mixed age groups’ indicates that the children from different age groups are brought together to capitalize on different opportunities in learning environment. Since in multi age classes, the children are grouped like family where chronological age is not differentiated, it is also called as ‘family groups’. But, widely varying ages of the children in the dynamic environment give rise to diverse challenges. The individual differences and age related developmental levels should be given special attention, to sustain the growth of mixed groups setting (Stonehouse, 2006). Common interests among peers should be shared at the same time different abilities should be acknowledged. Therefore, it is very important to study whether advantages offered by mixed age groups in early childhood education outweighs its disadvantages. Advantages Heterogeneous group environment fuels development by integrating inherent characteristics of an individual to observe, emulate and initiate a wide range of competencies. The children from nongraded group pick up skills and abilities from each other–younger from older, and older from younger. Since in mixed age groups multifarious levels of maturity and competence are easily available, its benefits are numerous (Nilsen, 2004). Children of varying age group are exposed to numerous broad range of activities in the classroom. They have wide scope to get challenged and prove themselves according to their ability, and hence they never get bored. Mixed age groupings in early childhood settings can have positive influence in the acquisition of potential developmental milestones. Therefore, its relevance may be extended to various developmental areas like social and emotional development, cognitive development; and language and communication development. The actual developmental level determined by chronological age order can be enhanced by collaboration with more capable peers (Corrigan et al., 2006). The children who have not yet achieved age related progression milestones will be saved from developing inferiority complex. And, tend to do much better if healthy environment is made available. Social/emotional context The joint efforts of older and younger children encourage new skills development for individual child. This gives rise to leadership qualities and organizational skills in elder children. At the same time younger children develop sense of security and trust (Rasmussen, 2005). Kindness, compassion, and consideration for others are also inculcated when the elder ones help their indigent colleagues. The children become more participative in the activities and at the same time selfless, sharing attitude and sportsmanship develops. The development of cooperative approach creates good feelings of self worth (Corrigan et al., 2006). The child becomes more independent and responsible. Cognitive When the children of varying levels of cognitive maturity interacts higher order cognitive functions like literacy, is positively benefited. The knowledge of letters and sounds which is an elemental part of the early education in toddlers is improved by observing and imitating older children. The childs partially developed knowledge and skills related to activities like reading, writing etc are extended to higher levels with assistance provided by their more able counterparts. The younger ones become more efficient in response to these external influences. Flexibility and competency offered in mixed group education, leads to the development of thought process (Rasmussen, 2005). This increases problem solving capacity of children. When the elder ones help younger children they try to tackle the child at his/her own level. They experiment different ways which in turn helps them to acquire innovative skills as well as their patience levels are also increased (Corrigan et al., 2006 and Christie and Stone, 1999). Mixed age groups facilities uses natural strengths of each child and maturates by coordinated effort of the children. Thus, these settings nurture a team work culture (Bennett & Tayler, 2006). Language and communication development Language skills are developed through daily observations and communication skills are developed by use of proper language. The multi age group environment has the most potential to provide language enrichment. When children of varying levels of developmental maturity come together, the children easily captures language skills by watching and listening to their colleagues without much effort. Then, they attempt to apply their vocabulary in conversation. Physical and motor development The elder ones instruct the younger ones in the progression of proper play. This fosters early development of motor skills such as climbing, playing circle games, and throwing balls in young children. Disadvantages The progress of children in mixed age classroom is affected by the teacher and his/her instructional practice. The personal development needs and abilities of children vary with their age. The preschoolers might be interested in doing things which is beyond the capabilities of toddlers. The smaller ones may require more attention than older ones, while older ones wants to learn advanced skills in each domain. When the child is very small he enjoys practicing one activity again and again till he becomes master, but this attitude changes as the age advances. The child becomes result oriented and interested in the end product of the activity. The growth of older children should not be hampered. Games or activities that involve small pieces may dangerous for smaller age group children. Adults need to supervise these activities or divide such exercises into proper age groups. In mixed age groups, the smaller children’s cognitive ability might develop fast but there would always be limitation of development of motor skills. Therefore, to maximize the benefits of mixed age grouping, age wise developmentally appropriate activities should be designed so that neither older ones nor younger ones feel neglected. The individual requirements, interests, and temperaments of each child should be taken into consideration by the classroom mentor. The classroom environment should ensure that younger children are not dismayed by older or more competent ones. The children should be respectful and caring towards each other to build up good relationship with each other. A level of understanding or behavior of older children towards younger ones should be appreciated by teacher. Conclusion Mixed age group facilities in early childhood education have potential to provide developmentally-enriching experiences. Mixed age group settings create a stimulating classroom atmosphere and additional learning opportunities for the individual treating each child as separate entity. To meet the needs of each age optimum age range, the ratio of older to younger children, allotting particular time to every individual, curriculum design, and development of suitable teaching methods are critical to the success of multi age grouping. The children should enjoy stressfree healthy atmosphere. If proper precautions are taken, multi age grouping soar confidence in each child. Mixed age groups in early childhood education can be looked upon development of mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship among peers. References Ashford, J.B., LeCroy, C.W., & Lortie, K.L. (2001). Human behavior in the social environment (2nd ed.) Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Bagdi, A., & Vacca, J. (2005). 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