Early Learning and Development Benchmarks

Christina J. Groark, Stephanie K. McCarthy, Afton R. Kirk. (2014). Early Child Development: From Theory to Practice. Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

Physical Development – This area is only split into two different aspects. The first one is ‘moving and handling’, this means that children must be able to show control and confidence in large and small movements. The second aspect is ‘health and self-care’, this means that children must know how important it is to stay healthy and do regular exercise.

This section focuses on the standard, “Children demonstrate strategies for reasoning and problem solving” (Early Childhood Iowa, 2012, p. 99). Through this standard, a child will: show interest in and find a variety of solutions to questions, tasks, or problems; recognize and solve problems through active exploration, including trial and error, and through interactions and discussions with peers and adults; share ideas or make suggestions of how to solve a problem presented by another person. Adults must support these benchmarks by providing opportunities for each child to try new ways of using materials, creating a safe environment with developmentally appropriate materials that offer an appropriate amount of stimulation and choice for each child to explore and play with, allowing each child time to process experiences and information, talking through problems with children to model problem-solving, holding class meetings to discuss issues that may occur and have the children brainstorm solutions, and choosing appropriate materials that promote creativity, self-expression, number, and emerging literacy skills (Early Childhood Iowa,

*Social and emotional development: Children now begin to make friends, understand rules, they enjoy helping others and being given responsibility, they like routine and need structure.

A child’s development can be measured through physical and language milestones, intellectual, emotional and social development.

Physical activity encourages children and young people to develop all their physical skills and to practice the skills that they already have. Your role in supporting a child’s physical development will be to ensure that the child has a wide variety of experiences of being in a safe environment. Any setting should offer a wide range of equipment that can be used both indoors and out. It is considered important that children are given opportunities to develop their gross motor skills indoors as well as outdoors. Such opportunities may be provided by designated areas such as soft play area or by activities such as drama.

* Personal, Social and Emotional Development – a child who can communicate feelings, needs and ideas develops a strong sense of self and is increasingly able to relate to others in rewarding and appropriate ways.

Choose a current issue to research that can be related to providing quality physical education at the elementary school level. Some examples of issues might be childhood obesity, budget constraints, family / home environment, nutrition, prenatal care, lack of medical care or other factors that either offer an advantage or disadvantage to a child’s motor development. Review

Early childhood education has many benefits and there is the potential for many significant outcomes if universal preschools were put into place. Some feel that children who start kindergarten without previously attended preschool sometimes lack certain skills such as social and communication skills and an inability to follow routines. There were also studies done that found attending preschool could help to close the achievement gap in the grade school years. A child’s first few years of life are most important, and they absorb the most during those years. By providing universal preschool, all children would be benefiting, especially those who are in at-risk families or part of the lower class. As a society, we have a responsibility to help the children in our communities and provide them with the education they need in order to help them succeed in life.

Social and emotional competence are important to an individual’s well-being and success later in life. A bond or attachment is typically

Conducting this observation help me to understand the important role that developmental domains plays in the life of all children. As a child grows physically, socially and intellectual I recognized that a child’s daily enivornment and partenal interactions has a significant affect on the child’s overall development. In the case of Dai’Lynn he is an only child in the home and he aslo attends daycare for several hours monday through friday. Based on my observation of Dai’Lynn I would say that he enjoys social interaction, he communicates well and has developed a strong sense of independece. Four significant concepts I learned from this assignments

The Foundations of Lifelong Health is a brief published by Harvard University’s Center on the developing child. In essence, the brief focuses on the concept of healthy child development as the framework for a healthy future (Shonkoff, Duncan, Yoshikawa, Fisher, Guyer & Magnuson, 2010). The idea behind this thought is that if people are kept healthy in their early years, then they can continue to progress as healthy adults (Shonkoff et al., 2010). To ensure this positive continuum, the bio-developmental framework focuses on the development of policies and programs that enable caregivers and the community to reinforce the foundations of health (stability, safety, and nutrition), and trigger a positive response (see figure 1.). The bio developmental framework focuses on these four aspects: policy and program lever

The years before kindergarten are among the most crucial time in a young child’s life to learn. School readiness, a multidimensional concept, has the ability to convey advantages in academic success in school. Children who enter school with early skills in math and reading tend to have more academic success, attain higher levels of education, and have a higher chance of securing employment (1). Their ability to recognize letters, read words in a book, write their own name, and count numbers are all factors that display early literacy and cognitive development, and in the past years, the number of young children with these qualities has increased over time. During the beginning years of a child's life, whether it’s from socioeconomics, ethnicity, daycare, or all of them combined, multiple factors influence a child’s readiness for school.

Social and emotional development is the development of the child’s identity and self-image, relationships and feeling about themselves and learning to live with others in both the family and society which is one of the most important parts of development.

As they becomes more adept at this skill, he or she will be able to use the information gained to develop conceptual thinking, language, problem solving abilities, memory, and perceptions. The social and emotional milestones are the aspects that involves ones child's ability to interact with the others. It considers an individual, growing and understanding of their own feelings as well as their perceptions and reactions to the feelings or emotions of the others. This area is extremely important in a child's developmental progress since it is connected to their self-esteem and identity, his or her moral ideology, and his or her actions towards other people that surrounds within their