Brief Description of characteristics of Early Childhood

1. Developmental Stage:
Early Childhood

2. • Time for children to be in school and
at play.
• time to grow strong and confident with
the love and encouragement of their
family and an extended community of
caring adults.
• Precious time in which children should
live free from fear, safe from violence
and protected from abuse and
exploitation.

3. Childhood
• Early Childhood - ( 3 yrs to 6 yrs)
• Later childhood - ( 6 yrs to 12 yrs)

4. Characteristics of Early childhood
• Early childhood development is the key to all
productive development of the child.
• It is a period of rapid development.
• It is known as problem age
• It is toy age
• It is questioning age
• It is a pre gang age

5. Early childhood ( 3-6)
• Early childhood development is the key to all
productive development of the child.
• Researches show that half of a persons
intelligence will be developed by age of four.

8. Brain Maturation
• By age 6, it is at 95 percent of its adult
weight.
• It is evident in their capabilities.

9. • Drastic change in language development.
• Visual pathways are getting stronger as they
grow.
• In early stage unable to reproduce what they
see.

11. • It is a period of rapid –
– physical
– Mental
– emotional
– social
– language development
.

12. Period of major developmental
aspects
• Understanding
• moral values
• some common interests

13. • It is a period of slow growth and rapid
development

14. Characterisitcs of early childhood
• For parents
»The Problem age
» Toy Age

15. • For educators
» Preschool age

16. • For psychologists
»The Pre-gang
»The Exploratory or The Questioning’ age

17. A period of physical development:
• Change in height
• Change in body proportion
• Disappearance of baby look
• Particular body build appears
• Baby teeth begin to replaced by permanent
teeth
• Finer muscle coordination improved

18. • Children between the ages of 2 and 6 years tend
to grow about 3 inches in height each year and
gain about 3.5 kg weight in each year.
• The average 6-year-old weighs about 20 kg
weight and is about 46 inches in height. During
early childhood, children start to lose some of their
baby fat, making them less like a baby, and more
like a child as they progress through this stage. By
around age 3, children will have all 20 of their
primary teeth, and by around age 4, may have
20/20 vision. Many children take a daytime nap
until around age 4 or 5, then sleep between 11
and 13 hours at night.

19. Body proportion
• The 3-year-old is very similar to a toddler
with a large head, large stomach, short
arms, and short legs. But as grows
develop the proportion of human structure.

20. Observe the videos of motor activities of
children.

23. • Acquisition of motor skills like
–Throwing
–Catching
– running
–Jumping
–Climbing
– riding a tricycle
– self-feeding
– dressing
–Balancing
– colouring, drawing etc.

24. A period of language development
• Strongly motivated to speak
(the chatterbox age)
• Pre speech forms of communication
disappears
• crying is greatly curtailed
• use gestures, but mainly as supplements to
speech.

25. • At 3 years of age, children enjoy listening to people,
by 4 years they listen to longer stories and answer
questions about a story they have just heard.
• Has a vocabulary of more than 1000 words.
• Can comprehend ‘no’ used to indicate non-
existence.

26. • Points out animals, objects, food from a larger
group of pictures.
• Recognizes time in all pictures (morning, day, night)
and all major colours.
• Comprehends and uses simple present and present
continuous tense forms with feminine and
masculine genders.

27. • Comprehend comparative sentences. • Understand
and often use colour, number and time-related
words, for example, ‘red’ car, ‘three’ fingers and ‘
yesterday/tomorrow’.
• At 3 years of age, children use 3-word sentences
and are non-fluent. By 4 years, they use longer
sentences and link them together.

28. • Ask many questions using the words, ‘why’, ‘where’
and ‘what’.
• Describe events that have already happened.
• Enjoy make-believe play.
• Start to plan games with others.

29. A period of emotional development
• Period of intense emotions
• children are unable to control their emotions
• Emotions dominating are
• Anger
• Fear
• Jealousy
• Curiosity
• envy
• Joy
• Grief
• Affection

30. • express anger through
– temper tantrums
– Crying
– screaming
– kicking
– jumping up and down

31. A period of Social Development
• Early childhood is often called as “The Pre
gang age”.
• They like to interact with others but group
loyalty is not there. Will shift from group to
group based on satisfaction of their needs.

32. It is an imitative age.
• Imitations of speech and actions of others
are prevalent.
• Imitative nature develops creative talents.

33. • The child develops social qualities in his/her
family
• A good family provides a good social
atmosphere for the child to develop healthy
social habits

34. A period of Development of
Understanding
• By the age of three they know their sex, their
full names, and names of different parts of
their bodies
• children’s understanding of people, objects
and situations increases rapidly
• Children come to know about the simple
relationships, like - parents, sibling,
relatives etc

35. • concepts of bodily functions
• space
• size
• numbers
• colours
• shapes
• time
• self
• beauty etc.

36. Children are in Pre Operational Stage
• They use language
• Symbolism ( Assuming a role to object or
person)
• Stage of role playing
• Can follow law of permanence
• In early stage unable to follow law of
conservation

38. A period of Development of Interests
• Interest in play
• Interest in human body
• Interest in self
• Interest in clothes
• Interest in Religion
• Interest in Sex

39. Problems of early childhood

40. Eating problems:
• Early eating experiences of children play
a significant role in determining their
later personality characteristics as eating
has a direct relationship with the physical
well-being of the child

41. • Not eating
• Vomiting
• Dawdling

42. Elimination Problem:
• Method of toilet training have long term
consequences for later personality
characteristics

43. Sleeping Problem
• when the child recognizes the discrepancy
between ones own hour of retiring and the
bed time of the other family members.
• The child does not want to be left out of any
activities by going to sleep early.

44. • Awakening during the night may be initiated
by many different events: illness, nightmares,
changes in daytime routine, bed wetting etc
• Once the rhythmic sleep pattern has been
broken, there is a tendency for the child to
continue night time awakening in the absence
of the original event

45. Accidents:
• No longer as carefully supervised and protected
as they were when they were babies
• Not aware about dangers
• Accidents can affect the head, feet, legs, hands,
arms, body and face of a child, intelligence and
general function.

46. Social Adjustment Problems:
• Children under 4 years of age cannot be
expected to be have in a truly social manner.

47. • They will push, grab, fight and refuse to share
their things with others

48. • By the time they are 5 years old, children
should have overcome some of these
behaviours.

49. • Children who still behave in an unsocial way
after other children of the same age have
developed more socially acceptable patterns
will find that they have no one to play with.

50. • other children also dislike a child with unsocial
behaviour

51. • these children will develop adjustment
problem in the social environment.