Early Childhood Development: Language, Literacy, and Play

Posted on Nov 28, 2024 in Psychology and Sociology

Early Literacy Skills:

• Print Motivation: A child’s interest in and enjoyment of books.
• Phonological Awareness: The ability to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words.
• Narrative Skills: The ability to describe things and events and tell stories.
• Vocabulary: Knowing the names of things.
• Print Awareness: Noticing print, knowing how to handle a book, and how to follow the written words on pages.
• Letter Knowledge: Learning to name letters, knowing they have sounds, and recognizing them.

Symbolic Thought vs. Deferred Imitation

Symbolic Thought: Using an object to represent something else.

Deferred Imitation: Reproducing something learned in a previous event; this would be repeated elsewhere—for example, using something else.

Example: A child uses a marker to paint their eyebrows. The ECE examined the “dramatic brown” and asked, “Did you learn this at home?” The child nodded yes. This example shows symbolic thought.

Early Literacy Skills:

• Print Motivation: A child’s interest in and enjoyment of books.
• Phonological Awareness: The ability to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words.
• Narrative Skills: The ability to describe things and events and tell stories.
• Vocabulary: Knowing the names of things.
• Print Awareness: Noticing print, knowing how to handle a book, and how to follow the written words on pages.
• Letter Knowledge: Learning to name letters, knowing they have sounds, and recognizing them.

Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage: Imitation

Imitation: Performance of an act whose stimulant is the observation of an act performed by another person.

• 2 months: Imitate actions they could see themselves make.
• 1 year: Imitation of any actions not in the child’s repertoire begins.
• 8-12 months: Imitate other people’s facial expressions.
• 18 months: Deferred imitation (a child’s imitation of some action at a later time) begins.

Overgeneralization

Learners/children create their own rules of language, extending the application of rules. Examples: “I drink milk for lunch”; saying everything is a dog.

Fast Mapping: The process of learning an unknown word and guessing its meaning based on the context; occurs after 24 months, for example, during dramatic play.

Theories of Language Acquisition:

• Behaviorist: Children imitate adults (Skinner).
• Cognitive: (Piaget)
• Innateness/Nativist: (Chomsky)
• Interactionist: (Bruner, Vygotsky)

Observe, Wait, Listen (OWL) Strategy

The Hanen Centre OWL strategy encourages early learning teachers to:

• Observe: Gain insight into the child’s interests and abilities.
• Wait: Give the child the opportunity to initiate conversation.
• Listen: Respond appropriately to what the child is saying.

Early learning teachers use:

• Closed-ended questions.
• Open-ended questions.
• Cognitively challenging or thought-provoking questions.

According to Isenberg and Jalongo, children’s play can reveal children’s:

• Interest in stories, knowledge of story structures, and story comprehension.
• Understanding of fantasy in books.
• Symbolic representation.

Importance of Play-Based Learning: The science of purposeful play; real learning; classroom as teacher.

Symbolic Play: Using an object to represent something else. For example: Using a wooden block as a car.

The Six Stages of Play:

• Unoccupied Play (0-3 months): When babies make movements with their arms, legs, hands, and feet, they are learning and discovering.
• Solitary Play (0-2 years): When a child plays alone and is not interested in playing with others yet.
• Spectator/Onlooker Behavior (2 years): When a child watches and observes other children playing but will not play with them.
• Parallel Play (2+ years): When a child plays alongside or near others but does not play with them.
• Associative Play (3-4 years): When a child starts to interact with others during play, but there is not much cooperation.
• Cooperative Play (4+ years): When a child plays with others and has a shared interest.

Stress in Children: “Stress is a mental, physical, or biochemical response to a perceived threat or demands.”

• Positive Stress: Mild stress in the context of good attachment.
• Tolerable Stress: Serious, temporary stress, buffered by supportive relationships.
• Toxic Stress: Prolonged activation of the stress response system without protection.

Scaffolding: Is the process of linking what a child knows or can do with new information or skills the child is ready to acquire (Geswik, 2017).

Child Brain Development:

• The brain grows 1.7 grams a day. Babies need loving interactions and touch to meet their needs.
• At birth, the brain has 200 billion brain cells called neurons.
• The brain grows 1.7 grams a day during a baby’s first year.
• Communication across different regions of the developing brain occurs most rapidly during the first two years of life.
• By the age of two, the brain reaches about 75% of adult weight.
• Toddlers have more than 100 trillion connected cells called synapses at age 3—the most they will likely ever have in their life.
• By the age of 2, the brain’s structures have the overall appearance of an adult brain.

Understanding Toddler Cognitive Development

Substage 5: 12-18 months

• Increased repertoire of physical skills.
• Trial and error.
• Increased exploration.
• Babies’ understanding of object permanence matures.

Stage 6: Around 18 months

• Symbolic/representational thought and play. Symbolic play is the ability to take on a mental image of something that is not there, to substitute one object for another, or to mime an object when none is available.
• Deferred imitation: “Reproducing observed behaviors after a period of time” (Geswik).