chapter 6 understanding four and five year...
TRANSCRIPT
Physical Development
• Increased body strength and coordination makes
movement fun
• Body proportions are changing. By 5 ½ years old,
most children’s legs are about half the length of the
body. This makes running, jumping, and balancing
easier for preschoolers.
• Bones become harder and stronger
• Lose baby teeth, gain permanent teeth
• (good nutrition is important)
Activity: Physical Skills Learning
Centers
• 4yr old Gymnast
• Kid Bodybuilder
• kid piano prodigy
Gross Motor Development • They improve their skills as their body becomes stronger and longer.
• At 4 years old:
– one can hop on one foot
– walk down stairs with alternating feet
– can balance on 1 foot for about 10 seconds.
– Can walk backwards, toe to heel for 4 steps.
• At 5 years old:
– Begin to skip
– Ride a bike with training wheels
– Can walk forward and backward on a balance beam.
– They can climb fences
– march to music
– Catching and throwing improves.
• As the child’s brain matures, there is better coordination of motor and visual
systems.
Fine Motor Development • String beads
• Work with small games or puzzles (by 5 yrs they can put
together18-35 pieces)
• Build straight and tall towers from blocks
• Writing and drawing skills improve quickly.
• Drawing skills are more refined and adults can recognize what
they’re drawing.
• Begins to recognize letters. They can distinguish between writing
and non-writing
• They can copy and print a few letters, but not often correctly. Mirror
images are difficult.
• Fairly skilled with a writing tool. They can stay in the lines fairly
well.
• They begin to understand letters and sounds are linked.
Discussion & brainstorm:
• Discuss and brainstorm activities for encouraging
preschoolers to practice printing their names. How much
emphasis should you place on this skill sand accuracy at this
age?
Self Help Skills
• Dressing and undressing with little help
• Can tell front from the back of clothing
• Can buckle belts and close zippers
• By 5, may even button and unbutton
• Can put shoes on the right feet; may tie own shoelaces
• Self feeding is easier. They enjoy helping with serving.
They can use spoons/forks with ease
• Can cut some foods with knife.
• Better able to take care of hygiene
• Can brush own teeth
• Can comb their hair
Cognitive Development
• This is a time for huge gains.
• Preschoolers have become more skilled in
thinking without having to act things out, so they
have a better understanding of symbols than
younger children.
• They have increased language comprehension
and expressive language.
• You can test a preschooler’s recognition and
recall skills.
Play changes • Children start creating their own symbols at this age,
and this is reflected in their play. Instead of imitating
adults, they begin to add their own ideas. New
symbols begin in art. Before 4 years old, children tend
to scribble or just draw simple shapes
• Understanding symbols is important for developing
more advanced cognitive skills. Cognitive
development during the preschool years helps prepare
children for future learning during the school years.
2 year old 3 year old 4 year old 5 year old
Preschoolers are curious
• They want to learn why things happened around
them. They ask a lot of questions and are trying
to make sense of the world. They still have flaws
in their thinking, but asking questions again and
again makes their thinking become more and
more logical.
• Your curriculum should promote children’s
cognitive growth. As you provide new
experiences, the children’s vocabularies will grow.
They will learn new concepts.
What kinds of skills does having a
class pet teach?
• Size, color, method of eating, new vocabulary
words. Each new experience helps the children
grow intellectually.
• Role Playing Activity: A teacher is comforting a
child who is very sad at the loss of a beloved pet.
Evaluate the teacher’s effectiveness in meeting
the child’s need.
Language Comprehension
Skills
• New words related to space increase their understanding
(beside, above, below, backward, bottom, forward) they
also understand down, low, different and thin.
• As you instruct these students, children will be able to
understand and follow directions. “Place the green block
behind the blue block”
• They become better at following 3 step commands. “ Pick
up the puzzle, put it on the table, and wash your hands”
However, if you don’t sequence the directions correctly, it
may confuse the child.
Language Comprehension skills
cont.
• Children have a better understanding of singular and plural.
Sandwich vs. cookies
• Children start understanding the passive voice sentence.
“the orange was eaten by Brock.” A younger child would
think that the orange ate Brock. The 4-5 year old would
understand that Brock ate the orange.
• Words and phrases have more than 1 meaning,
preschoolers can become confused by this. “Wanda just
flew out the door.” or “I’m dying of hunger” (slang phrases)
Reading
• Most 4-5 year olds cannot read, but are developing pre-
reading skills. This starts by understanding symbolism.
Children first need to understand that a group of letters on
paper can symbolize any object.
• Preschoolers can recognize and name many letters of the
alphabet as well as their own names.
• They enjoy reading the same stores over and over and may
be able to pick out words they recognize.
• They can guess words they don't recognize by looking at
the first letter and the pictures for clues.
Expressive Language skills
• Children at this age tend to talk to you rather than
converse with you.
• When you talk about a subject, they may interrupt
you to talk about something entirely unrelated.
• In later years they will be better at 2-way
communication.
Articulation
• The ability to produce sounds of language. This
improves greatly at ages 4-5. Most children still have
trouble making the ch sound and the th sound. Others
may have trouble with the S sound, causing a lisp.
• Some preschoolers have stuttering problems.
Stuttering is the repeated sound or words and pausing
for unusually long times while speaking. For most
preschoolers, stuttering is a result of thinking faster
than they can talk. As children’s speech ability catches
up to their thinking ability, the stuttering problem tends
to disappear.
Vocabulary
• Most 4 year olds have about 1500 words in their
vocabularies.
• 5 year olds: 2000.
• Children at this age may make up their own meanings to
some words.
• They have mainly concrete nouns and action verbs in
their vocabularies. They are beginning to add modifiers
and adjectives to their vocabularies, so children would be
unlikely to use the words freedom or unfair unless they
were copying the words of adults.
Imitation
• They do imitate phrases they hear from adults of
TV. Often they don’t know what these words
mean, only that they’ve heard them before.
• Do as I say…not as I do
• Children see…children do
Grammar
• Grammar improves during preschool years. Children start
to learn there are exceptions to grammar rules. (ate, ran,
and went)
• They still put -ed at the end of words occasionally.
• They learn how to properly ask questions.
– 3 year old might ask “why the sky is blue?”
– 4 or 5 year old might ask “Why is the sky blue?”
• Some forms of pronouns give preschoolers trouble still.
“Him and me are going to the zoo.”
• They also have trouble with noun and verb agreement
“Tommy don’t have a crayon”
Math Skills
• Number concepts become easier for children of
this age.
• Rote counting is gained by most children before
they understand that each number represents a
certain amount.
• Most 4 year olds can rote count to 9
• Most 5 year olds can rote count to 20
• Rote counting develops at different rates,
therefore you need to observe children to make
sure your curriculum fits their skill levels.
Math Skills cont.
• True counting, in which an object is counted for
each number named, develops more slowly.
Math concepts cont. • At 4 years old, they usually recognize numerals 1-5
• 5 year olds usually recognize 1-10. They can
even dial their own phone numbers.
• Other math skills develop at this age. They’re
better able to recognize shapes and can
understand terms related to size and number
such as short, fat, tallest, same, first and last.
• They begin to understand money concepts. Most
can identify a penny, nickel and dime. They don’t
understand the value of the money though.
• Time concepts are more clear but are still
confusing. They start to understand the
difference between today, tomorrow and
yesterday but they don’t understand how much
time an hour or 5 minutes is.
Social-Emotional Development
• Preschoolers are helpful, cheerful and
cooperative.
• Emotions are changing in children at this age. As
they learn and grow, the causes of happiness,
fear, anger, and sadness change.
• The ways children react to these emotions
change too.
Social Development
• Companionships and friendships are important at this age.
Preschoolers are becoming more independent of adults.
They like to play on their own or with other children. They
may still need adults though to settle disputes or to help get
materials.
• They tend to have a few friends, usually of the same sex.
They are more likely to share their toys with a friend.
• Over 1/3 of a four year old child’s play is solitary play. By
age 5, play involves more interaction and cooperation.
• Children of this age accept supervision. They know their own
abilities and realize adults have reasons for rules.
Emotional Development
• They start to realize that there are other ways of showing
love other than a hug or physical signs of affection. They
start to realize that sharing or helping with a task is a way of
showing you care.
• Children may ask for help with a task even if they don’t need
it just to assure them that you care.
• Children start to develop a sense of humor. Laughter is a way
of expressing their happiness. They also laugh at things they
know are unusual , like a dog that says “meow” in a story.
Fear
• Causes of fear change at this age. Children are still afraid of
imagined creatures, such as monsters and ghosts. They
start to understand there is a difference between the real
and the imagined. This helps children deal with some of
these fears.
• 5 year olds are more afraid of being hurt. They know of
more things that can hurt them. They may be afraid of
doctors and dentists or of high places and dogs because of
prior experiences.
• Children work through fears in play. It helps them act out
some of their intense feelings and deal with their fears.
Discuss:
• Parents and caregivers may unintentionally
increase children’s fears when teaching about
strangers. How can you teach children about
strangers without adding to their fears?
Anger
• Less things anger preschoolers than toddlers.
• However, they can get angry if they cannot reach their
goals.
• They are more likely to use their words and yelling rather
than kicking and screaming.
• Some preschoolers respond more physically to anger than
other preschoolers by hitting, kicking, pushing, etc. They
may not have learned better ways of expressing anger from
adult role models or they may want attention.
Jealousy
• Jealousy may surface in many ways: regression,
physical problems such as stomachaches or
nightmares.
• These children need to be reassured that they are
still loved and given a little extra attention to make
them feel special.
Sadness
• 4-5 year olds become aware of situations of
sadness, like death.
• Children are not always sure how to express
sadness. They may deal with sadness in play.
• Often they need help from adults to learn that it is
okay to cry and talk about their feelings. They
need adults to model appropriate responses to
sadness and to provide clear explanations.
Teaching 4 and 5 year olds
• Children of this age enjoy feeling needed and important and
like to be helpful. You need to carefully select helpers so that
all get a chance to help even from those not as vocal.
• Children at this age love talking. After you read a story, the
children may enjoy retelling a story.
• They are usually able to retell it in sequence and in detail.
• Children of this age will imitate your speech. For this reason
you need to be careful of your statements. You should not
use words or statements you wouldn’t want them repeating.
Teaching 4 and 5 year olds cont.
• You do not need to function as a playmate as much now,
but you will handle more disputes among children.
• You will want to add new ideas to play also.
• Some children will have imaginary friends to which you
can encourage and tend to.
Teaching 4 and 5 year olds cont.
• Children are proud of their possessions and may enjoy
bringing toys to preschool, or will be proud of new shoes
or a jacket. Asking children questions about their things
can help build their self esteem.
• Their attention span is increasing and they enjoy working
on projects such as woodworking, cooking, sculpting clay,
etc. As they get older they will engage for longer periods
of time. The average time spent in most activities at this
age is about 7 minutes.