Preschool Development
Checklist
(part 1)
Getting to know and becoming familiar with
preschool
child development and some of the many different
ways in which preschool children and their behavior can
be defined, is a key ingredient in interacting
positively with your preschool child.
With this in mind
let's take a look at a few areas of preschool child
development so you'll have a bit of a preschool
development checklist to refer to.
In the beginning and first on the list is physical
development. Preschool children are natural explorers.
They go everywhere they can in the world they have
around them. The first physical attribute to develop is
what is known as their gross motor skills.
These are
defined as running, jumping, climbing, etc. As preschool
children play and explore, you see these skills going
from fairly rough to much smoother in a fairly short
amount of time. The finer motor skills, such as writing,
coloring (within the lines), drawing, cutting and
pasting, and such will develop a bit later.
Next up on our
preschool development checklist is
cognitive development. This is closely tied to a
preschooler's natural affinity to explore their world.
With exploration, curiosity and the quest to understand
how things around them function is prevalent.
You'll see
much role playing and imitation as preschool children
have no experience yet to draw from. Pulling objects and
toys apart in an effort to understand how things work is
a big part of a preschooler's day.
As their cognitive
development continues memory and recollection will grow
along with the concept of time and days. Role playing
and imitation are still prevalent as reality isn't the
dominant force yet. And the key for most of us to
realize and remind ourselves of is that attention span
is about 15 minutes... so be patient with their
development.
Patience and understanding are the keys for you at this
point. Remember that the preschooler's world at this
point is primarily one of fantasy and high level
discovery with very little attention span. Social
development is next but at this point they haven't
arrived. So, let's take a look at social development
next on our
preschool development checklist.
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