The Importance Of Physical Development In Child Development

The infants physical development starts with the head and then moves to other parts of the body. From the very beginning babies are very curious and are ready to start exploring. Infants necks are unable to support the weight of the head when the baby is sat up straight. They are able to turn their heads left to right when laying down. Infants are able to close their fist.

Physical development in children is an important area and is usually expected to happen automatically as they grow. The important areas are gross motor skills,

Pre-operational stage (toddler and early childhood) is demonstrated through the use of symbols, language, matures, memory and imagination are developed but thinking is non-logical.

Children develop cognition through two main stages that Jean Piaget theorized. The stages run from birth and infancy to school age children. Sensorimotor is the first stage and goes from birth to about the age of two. This stage implies that the children learn about the environment they live in and they learn this through the reflexes and movements they produce. They also learn that they are separate people from their parents and they can say goodbye to them and know they will come back. The second stage is called the preoperational stage. During this stage of development, children will learn how to incorporate symbols to represent objects. This is also the beginning of learning the alphabet and speech. The child is still very much egocentric at this point in time, but with the help of understanding educators, the child will grow appropriately onto the next stages of development. Finally, the children need to develop emotionally/socially.

Unit 166 - Support others to promote children’s physical development in an early years setting

In this domain Piaget stated that the child who is still in the preoperational stage can’t conceptualize abstractly and needs concrete physical situations. They can’t mentally manipulate information. The child is able to form stable concepts as well as magical beliefs and their thinking is still egocentric, which means that the child has difficulty seeing the viewpoint of others. Piaget split this stage into the symbolic and intuitive thought substage. In the symbolic function stage children are able to understand, represent, remember, and picture objects in their mind without having the object in front of them. Vygotsky stated that children learn cognitive tasks through their interactions with older peers and adults. Not only do younger children watch and imitate older people or peers as they complete tasks, but these older guides also help younger children accomplish tasks they couldn’t accomplish on their own. He calls this the zone of proximal development which he describes what children can do alone and what they can do with assistance. Another theorist named Bandura coined the term observational learning which means people learn appropriate social behaviors by observing and modeling others. This type of learning is most effective during childhood. Vygotsky believed that the important part of the cognitive development is language. He observed that very young

They begin to point to things that they want and are able to follow simple directions. They are also able to scribble and point to one body part such as the nose. Something that a parent can do with their child at this age is to allow the child to pretend play this way they are able to play and take a role of something such as a doctor, or a mom. A parent should be using simple and clear words so that the child can follow directions or simply describe things and what the child is asking for. Parents should also encourage the child to play with blocks and puzzles. By the time they are four and five years of age they should have already gained more cognitive skills like; naming colors, understand how counting works, draw a person with a few body parts, can make predictions about a simple book, knows about everyday things such as money, time, and food. For a parent to expand their cognitive development it’s essential to get them involved in the community and explore their interest. Also allowing the children to read a book just by looking at the pictures. This way they are able to retell the story. Finally teaching them the days of the week, months, and time of day so they begin to get an idea of their daily

Another key area of a child’s physical development is gross motor skills. Gross motor skills includes aspects such as head control, sitting up, the prone position, and walking. It is important that a baby had full head control this is so that it allows the child to be able to progress onto other areas or gross motor skills. It is vital that when picking a baby up that the head is supported this is so that no injury is caused to the neck. Once the muscles in the neck has developed then you can stop supporting the head as there is little chance of the neck becoming injured. A way that you can check if the neck muscles have developed properly is to put the baby into a sitting position and if the neck wobbles a bit then this means that the muscles

There are many theories of child development because we have been studying the field for so many years. Each theory has their different factors; biology, sociology, genetics, environment, relationships are just a few of them. “Thank you for making me so wonderful and complex”! (Psalms139:14). When one theory is formulated and used for awhile someone else may come behind that particular theorist and add some new points to expand the theory and then create a new one. That’s why I feel so many different theories exist.

This paper is will focus on the influences of physical and cognitive development in adolescence from 12 to 18 years of age. This part of the developmental stage has many factors that affect the physical development as well as the cognitive development in adolescence. In addition to influences of physical and cognitive development this paper will also focus on the hereditary and environmental influences that make up this stage in life.

As children progress through the early stages of their lives they will continually reach milestones that are somewhat of a tracker as to where they stand in their development, but at the same time it’s important to remember that even though there are suggested milestones as to a maturing task for a specific age and month, each child may mature differently than the next. One part of this progress that children will continually develop through in the early stages of their lives is motor skill development, which is the use of their larger and smaller muscles to perform adult like tasks. More specifically this development can be categorized into fine and

Intellectual development relates to this stage because at this stage children learn about the power that the mind has. They learn how to smile and make eye contact. They realise who the main people in their lives are. As they see these people all the time their mind remembers each person and knows that they are the main people that will be taking part in his/her life.

During this stage the child starts to use symbolism so the development of language is very fast during this period, but they can not see other points of view, it is all from their own perception. Piaget believed that the child in this stage was not capable of logical thought (Lee and Gupta).

In our textbook, it's stated that puberty brings steady improvements in gross motor performance, but the pattern of change differs for boys and girls. Because boys and girls are no longer well-matched physically, gender-segregated physical education usually begins in middle school. In the video, kids are shown performing in the Children's Circus, a physical education activity at Illinois State University's laboratory school, shows physical changes in adolescents that inclue gains in gross motot and athletic skills. The kids are in the air on bars and ladders performing various sorts of circus gymnastics that demonstrate strengh required to be able to do such acts.

Nowadays, more and more children have obesity compare to the children in thirty years ago. The research showed that children who have obesity in their early age may cause either short-term or long-term consequence. The short-term consequence for the obesity children include low self-esteem and the long-term consequence includes asthma and heart disease. (CDC) The best way to prevent these is to encourage children do at least one hour physical exercise a day within the trained instructor guided. ( Epstein 2014) My paper is mainly focused on how my curriculum promote physical development in a child care center.