Early childhood development encompasses ages 2 to 7 years old and involves simultaneous development in physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional domains. Physically, children gain improved motor skills like balancing, hopping, and pedaling during this period. Cognitively, they develop abilities like symbolic thinking, perspective-taking, and basic math and literacy skills. Socio-emotionally, children learn to recognize and manage emotions, form friendships, and develop gender identity and basic moral understanding. Language acquisition also rapidly expands during early childhood.

1. INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF THE
CARIBBEAN
BY: TANECIA STEVENS
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2. Early Childhood Development
 What is early childhood development?
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3. Early childhood development
 Early childhood is a stage in human development.
 In psychology, the term early childhood is usually
defined as the time period from the age of two until
the age of six or seven years.
 Play age is an unspecific designation approximately
within the scope of early childhood.
 There are three simultaneous development stages:
 Physical
 Cognitive
 Emotional and Social
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4. Physical Development
 2 years
 Throughout early childhood, height and weight increase
more slowly than in toddlerhood.
 Balances improves; walks more rhythmically; hurried
walk changes to run.
 Jumps, hops, throws, and catches with rigid upper body.
 Uses spoon effectively.
 First drawings are gestural scribbles.
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5. Balancing
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6.  3-4 years
 Running, jumping, hopping,
throwing, and catching become
better coordinated.
 Galloping and one foot skipping
appear.
 Pedals and steers tricycle.
 Uses scissors.
 Fastens and unfastens large
buttons
 Uses for effectively.
 Uses tadpole images to draw
pictures of persons
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7.  5-6 years
 Starts to lose primary teeth.
 Increase running speed, gallops more smoothly, and
engages in true skipping.
 Display more throwing and catching patterns.
 Copies some numbers and simple words.
 Draws more complex pictures.
 Uses knife to cut soft food.
 Tie shoes lace.
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8. Cognitive Development 2 years
 Make-believe becomes less dependent
on realistic objects, less self-centered,
and more complex; socio-dramatic play
increases.
 Understands the symbolic function of
photos and pictures in books.
 Takes the perspective of others in
simplified, familiar situations and in
face-to-face communication.
 Recognition memory is well develop.
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9.  Shows awareness of the distinction between inner
mental and outer physical events.
 Begins to count.
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10. • 3-4 years
 Understand the symbolic functions of drawing and of
models of real-world spaces.
 Grasps conversation, reasons about transformations,
reverse thinking, and understands cause-and-effect
relationships in familiar contexts.
 Distinguishes appearance from reality.
 Sorts familiar objects into hierarchically organized
categories.
 Uses private speech to guide behavior during
challenging tasks.
 Sustained attention and planning improve.
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11.  Uses scripts to recall
familiar experiences.
 Understands that both
beliefs and desires
determine behavior.
 Knowing meaning of
numbers up to ten,
counts correctly, grasps
principle of cardinality.
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12. • 5-6 years
 Magical belief decline.
 Ability to distinguish
appearance from reality
improves.
 Attention and planning
continue to improve.
 Recognition, recall, scripted
memory, and autobiographical
memory improve.
 Understanding of false belief
strengthens.
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13. Emotional & Social Development
 2 years
Understands causes, consequences, and behavioral
signs of basic emotions.
Begins to develop self-concept and self-esteem.
Shows early signs of developing moral sense – verbal
evaluations of own and others actions and distress at
harmful behaviors.
May display proactive (instrumental) aggression.
Gender-stereotyped belief and behavior increase.
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15.  3-4 years
Describes self in terms of observable characteristics
and typical emotions and attitudes.
Has several self-esteems, such as learning things in
school, making friends, and getting along with
parents,
Emotional self-regulation improves.
Experiences self-conscious emotions more often.
Relies more on language to express empathy.
Proactive aggression declines, while reactive
aggression (verbal and relational) increases.
Distinguishes truthfulness from lying.
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16. Engages in associative and cooperative play with
peers, in addition to parallel play.
Forms first friendships, based on pleasurable play
and sharing of toys.
Distinguishes moral imperatives from social
conventions and matters of personal choice.
Preferences for same-sex playmates strengthens.
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17.  5-6 years
Emotional understanding (the ability to interpret
predict, and influence others’ emotional reactions)
improves.
Empathic responding increases
Has acquired many morally relevant rules and
behaviors.
Gender-stereotyped beliefs and behavior and
preference of same-sex play mates continues to
strengthen.
Understand gender constancy.
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18. Language Development
 2 years
Vocabulary increases rapidly.
Uses a coalition of cues – perceptual and increasingly,
social and linguistic-to figure out words meanings.
Speak in simple sentences that follow basic word order
of native language.
Adds grammatical markers
Displays effective conversation skills.
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19. Children having conversation
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20.  3-4 years
Aware of some meaningful features of written
language.
Coins new words based on known words; extends
language meaning through metaphor.
Masters increasingly complex grammatical structure.
Occasion overextends grammatical rules to exceptions.
Adjust speech problem to fit the age, sex, and social
status
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21.  5-6 years
Understands that letters
and sounds are linked in
systematic ways
Uses invented spellings
By age 6, vocabulary
reaches about 10,000
words
Uses most grammatical
constructions
competently.
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22. Thank You2/26/2015 22Tanecia Stevens BA G&C