Physical development is the process that starts in human infancy and continues into late adolescent concentrating on gross motor skills and fine motor skills. Physical development involves control over the body, including muscles and physical coordination. Physical development is divided into fine and gross motor skills.  

Fine motor skills are the development and control of the smaller muscles of the hands, fingers, and feet so that a child can do more tasks such as drawing, fasten buttons on a shirt. Fine motor skills are more challenging to perform and begin to develop in life than gross motor skills. They tend to develop together because many activities depend on the coordination of both skills. When a baby is firstborn, they are not aware of the fact that they have hands. During their first year of life, an infant learns how to control their movements with their hands. When the child is approximately a year old, they learn how to hold objects using their thumb and index finger. As the child grows into toddlerhood, they normally start to develop whether they will be left or right-handed. The development of fine motor skills plays a crucial role in being ready to start school. Buying child puzzles and building blocks will also encourage the development of fine motor skills.  

Gross motor skills involve motor development of muscles that enable babies to hold up their heads, sit and crawl and eventually walk, run, jump and skip. Newborn babies have very little control over their bodies and the actions that they make. As they get older, they develop more control over these activities. A child may learn how to walk at 9 months while another child may learn to walk at 18 months. Gross motor development has two fundamentals: head to toe and trunk to extremities. This means that those gross motor skills develop in the headfirst before the arms and feet. Example: a child learns to hold its head up before walking and sitting up.  

A milestone is an action or event that marks a significant change or stage in a child’s development. From birth to 3 months, most infants begin to raise their heads slightly as they lie on their stomachs, hold their hands in a fist, use sucking and grasping reflexes and touch and pull their own hands. From 3 months to 6 months, babies are getting stronger and sharper. They begin to roll over, reach for objects, put objects in the mouth, push their bodies forward and pull themselves up by grabbing the railing of the crib. From 6 months to 9 months, most children begin to crawl, pull things towards themselves, move things from hand to hand and childproofing becomes important. From 9 months to 12 months, most children are sitting and standing without any help, walking with the help of someone and picking up and dropping toys. From 1 to 2 years, most children can walk by themselves, pick up their toys as they are standing, turn knobs, scribble on a paper, move to music being played, go up and down stairs without help and sit in a chair by themselves. From 2 to 3 years, children can kick a ball, jump in place, run, hold a crayon and draw a circle. From 3 to 4 years, children can balance on one foot, walk on a line, ride a tricycle, go down a slide with no help and build a tower with blocks. From 4 to 5 years, most children can do somersaults, jump forward with falling, jump on one foot, use safety scissors to cut on a line and write a few letters.  

As per definition: intelligence is the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations; it is also a skilled use of reason and the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate an environment.

Intelligence is the ability to use abstract thinking to measure and objective criteria, for example when doing a test. The traditional theory of intelligence it is based on two fundamental statements: humans have a unitary cognition, and individuals could have a single or quantifiable intelligence. Howard Gardner has developed a new theory in which he demonstrated that intelligence is a pluralistic phenomenon rather than a static single type of intelligence. He defined intelligence as the ability to solve problems encountered in real life, generating new problems to solve and the ability to make something valuable for one’s culture. He was able to identify seven types of intelligence during his research among different cultures which are: verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, musical, visual/spatial, body/kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal.

These are all equally valuable and viable however depending on cultural factors there are some of these types that are more favorable than others. For example in our western culture the two types of intelligence reinforced are verbal/linguistic and logical/mathematical. Intelligence increases as we develop and is influenced by the amount and quality of exposure we encounter.

Gardner’s theory helps children improve their abilities towards all seven types of intelligence fields honoring strengths and weakness within classroom settings. Every individual is smart to varying degrees in each of these intelligence more empathetic in some ways and less developed in others. When working on developing our intelligence first, it is important to identify strengths and weaknesses to be able to train and develop as many or all of these types of intelligence as possible, through practices and activities that help children learn and build strongest assets.

Language! 

A combination of diverse sounds and grammatical rules to form our way of communicating: language.  Language development can be intimidating when beginning to work with children but there are certain trends that professionals and parents can use as a guideline to appropriate developmental levels. 

Some of the typical language skills trends by age group: 

• Birth – 2 years old (Infancy): Infants tend to enjoy paying attention to people speaking around them and will begin babbling by 6-months old. At eight months they begin to understand basic words and should say their first word around 12 months old. 
• 2-6 years old (Early Childhood): Vocabulary blooms during early childhood. At the age of 2-3 children are learning at least 30-50 new words a month and later children begin to learn sometimes as much as 20 words a day. 
• 6-10 years old (Middle Childhood): Creativity and engaging in conversations marks middle childhood. Children by age 8 have concrete skills in pronunciation and have progressed in listening and cause-and-effect relationships 
• 10-14 years old (Early Adolescence): In early adolescence skills to understand beyond literal meanings and acquire a vocabulary including 50,000 words by the sixth degree. 
• 14-18 years old (Late Adolescence): Figurative language and the finer points of language are acquired by late adolescence. Vocabulary will grow to over 80,000 words by the end of High School. Late Adolescence also marks when the academic specific vocabulary is understood. 

Some ways to help engage with children while they are developing their language skills are:

• Have conversations and encourage vocalization. 
• Read storybooks 
• Ask questions
• Get Creative: make their own stories 

These developmental milestones are just guidelines and every child learns and develops at their own pace. If there seems to be a delay or concern of language development then speaking with a certified/medical professional is best. 

Popular language models: 

• Behaviorism (Verbal Behavior)
• Nativism
• Cognitive Process Theories 
• Sociocultural Theories 
• Functionalism 

Resources: McDevitt, T. M., & Ormrod, J. E. (2020). Child development and education. Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

The importance of family, culture and community in a child’s education.

The families play a huge role in a child’s educational development. A parent can provide a child with learning rich environment at home, motivating them to learn and stay involved in their learning. Parent engagement in their child’s school can develop a love for learning in the children, and they are not only involved they are also motivated to learn and retain the information. An example of parent’s involved and motivation for children in education is when I was younger and my parents would get more excited for me if I was one of the top three kids in my school, I always used to feel good about myself and my self-esteem would increase, I would work hard to make my parents proud of me. 

As kids grow older their parents introduce them to the culture they are born in, which can be norms and behavior that children learn and follow. Culture beliefs and norms usually have a positive impact on the children, because it makes them closer to their parents. In Asian cultures it is important to attend school and do extremely well in school in order to meet your parent’s expectations. Culture can affect a child’s abilities in multiple domains such as cognitive, emotional, social, physical and language development. Cultural backgrounds provide children with an identity and belonging to a positive culture can help children excel in their academic careers. Children and teachers should appreciate and include diverse cultural beliefs to maximize children’s academic achievement and educational stress. 

There is a famous saying that it requires a village to raise a child, it is the responsibility of the community to assure high quality education for the children. Parents, culture and community involvement in education can support learning and deliver higher grade for the children. Community can provide with resources needed for all children and connecting school, community and parents can improve schools, strengthen families, create community support and increase students’ achievements and excellence. Community can provide students with the required resources and support, so the children can learn and develop their skills, giving them a boost in self-esteem, develop positive social relationships, improve behaviors and adapt well to school.

Jean Piaget was a swiss psychologist; well known for his pioneering work in child development. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called “genetic epistemology”. He was interested in not only in the nature of though, but in how it develops and understanding how genetics impact this process. Piaget studied the intellectual development of his own three children and created a theory that described the stages that children pass through development of intelligence and formal though processes. He suggested that children sort the knowledge they acquire through their experiences and interactions into groupings known as schemas.

Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development are as follows;

The Sensorimotor Stage: The first stage of development lasts from birth to approximately age two. At this point in development, children know the world primarily through their senses and motor movements.

The Preoperational Stage: The second stage of development lasts from the ages of two to seven and is characterized by the development of language and the emergence of symbolic play.

The Concrete Operational Stage: The third stage of cognitive development lasts from the ages of seven to approximately age 11. At this point, logical thought emerges but children still struggle with abstract and theoretical thinking.

The Formal Operation Stage: in the fourth and final stage of cognitive development lasting from age 12 and into adulthood, Children become much more adept and abstract thought and deductive reasoning.

There are many activities one can implement into the classroom and home. Cognitive learning pushes children to work through different problems on their own. The goal is to help children think and apply problem-solving ideas and skills. If a child has time to think about the answer , then they are not using cognitive theory.