Early Childhood Stage of Development

Early Childhood Stage of Development

The developmental period known as early childhood ranges from the

years two to six. These years are often called the play years. During

this time play flourishes and supports all of the phases of life.

Early childhood has many physical developments like body growth, brain

development, and motor development. During this time both gross and

fine motor skills develop dramatically. Children can walk upstairs

with alternating feet, ride a tricycle, and even catch a ball with

their hands. They can also put on and remove simple clothing items,

feed themselves, and draw their first pictures of people.

For our team presentation we chose to do an obstacle course designed

for a two to six year old child. The obstacle course consists of six

activities that deal with cognitive and physical development. For the

activity we chose a three year old boy named Christian. He is called

CJ for short. The first activity is throwing hoops over a cone. C. J.

has to stand behind a piece of tape and try to throw the hoops over

the cone. This is testing physical development of the gross motor

skill of throwing. The next activity is testing cognitive development.

CJ has to match colored blocks with color-coded cut out squares on a

poster board. There are yellow, red, blue, and green blocks. The

poster board has four squares that are cut out with the colors blue,

yellow, red, and green around them. It is CJ's job to match the colors

and place the blocks into the correct squares. The third obstacle is

another physical one. Christian has to sit on a scooter and scoot his

way down a lane made of cones to the end where a bag of...

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...sk could still be completed. The child

would simply have the feel the glasses and the bowl. They could feel

the liquid and size of the containers and try to develop an answer. If

a child were in a wheelchair, most of the obstacles could still be

completed. The scooter activity could be done with the exception that

the wheelchair would be used instead of the scooter.

The obstacle course is great fun for the children, while testing their

physical and cognitive development at the same time. This course is

better suited for school because of the size. The children need room

to move around and it is too much to set up at someone's home. It also

needs to be a school area that is wheelchair assessable. Also, it can

accommodate more children when done at school and it is a great way to

test developments in early childhood.