Seven Domains of Early Childhood Education #AllAboutPreschoolers #MyFriendAlexa

Hi Everyone

This is my fourth post for #MyFriendAlexa and one of the most important aspect in Early Childhood Education for everyone to know. Now before we move on to know these domains it is important to understand what development is.

Development describes the growth of humans throughout the lifespan, from conception of death. The scientific study of human development seeks to understand and explain how and why people change throughout life. This includes all aspects of human growth, including physical, emotional, intellectual, social, perceptual, and personality development.

THERE ARE 7 DOMAINS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

Gross Motor

This involves learning to use all the “big” muscles on our body. Crawling, walking, running, skipping, jumping and climbing are all examples of gross motor activity.

Fine Motor

Fine motor involves activities teach hand-eye coordination. These activities require a child to learn to precisely control the muscles in the hands. Things like colouring, writing, cutting with scissors, using tweezers, tearing paper, etc. all help build fine motor skills.

Language

This domain includes alphabetic, phonemic awareness, oral, and written language. Even though your little one won’t be able to read for several years, you can read to them. Talking about things throughout the day even when it feels silly is especially important as well. Learning ABC’s, as well as sound each letter makes is another example of language activity.

Language development is a process starting early in human life. Infant start without language, yet by four months of age, babies can discriminate speech sounds and engage in babbling. Some research has shown that the earliest learning begins in uterus when the fetus starts to recognize the sounds and speech patterns of its mother’s voice. Usually, productive language is considered to begin with a stage of preverbal communication in which infants use gestures and vocalizations to make their intent known to others. According to general principle of development, new forms then take over old functions, so that children learn words to express the same communicative functions which they had already expressed by preverbal means.

Stages of Language Development

Babbling (3-9 months)

Single Words (10-13 months)

Two Words (18- 2 years)

Multi word Sentences (2years+)

As children age, they continue to learn new words every day. By the time they enter school around the age of five, children typically have a vocabulary of 10,000 words or more.

Cognitive Development

This includes cause-and-effect, reasoning, as well as early-math skills. Believe it or not, a baby who continually drops a spoon from his highchair is exercising his cognitive ability. He learns that when he drops it, you will pick it up (Cause-and-effect). Counting and patterning are also included in this domain for pre-schoolers.

Cognitive refers to the inner processes and products of the mind that leads to “knowing”. It includes remembering, problem solving and decision making.

Social/Emotional

Your child is a social being! Learning to play especially with others is a skill. “Teaching” in this domain also involves making sure a child feels safe and nurtured. Manners and using kind words might also be examples includes in this domain.

Self-Help/Adaptive

Activities in this domain include learning to dress yourself, feed oneself, using the toilet, brushing teeth, bathing, tying shoes, etc. Everything that a child needs to know to start being more independent could be included in this domain.

Moral/Spiritual/Cultural

It is difficult to make generalization and identify milestones within moral, spiritual and cultural development. And the reason is, there are many factors which influence their development like nationalities, cultures and families, all do things differently.

Moral development

Morality is the ability to learn the difference between right and wrong and understand how to make right choices. Children do not usually demonstrate moral behaviour and beliefs until they are around the age of two. At this point many children start to show empathy-based guilt when they break rules. As with other facets of development, morality doesn’t form independently from the other areas of development. Children’s experiences at home, the environment around them, and their physical, cognitive and social development influence their understanding of right versus wrong.

Spiritual development

This is often closely linked to moral development. It includes beliefs, whether religious or not, the search for meaning or purpose, relationships, creativity, a sense of otherness, wonder and awe, self-knowledge, feeling and emotions. A child is likely to have the same opinions as their caregivers until they are of an age where they can decide for themselves. This development continuous throughout a person’s life.

Cultural development

Culture refers to the customs, practices, languages, values and world views that define social group such as those based on nationality, ethnicity, region or common interests. Culture affects many areas in a child’s life, including food they eat, the behaviours they are allowed to exhibit, the holidays they celebrate and the activities they participate in.

The main thing to know about these domains is they are all equally important. Each of these domains are also interrelated. For example when your baby starts crawling, he will also be enhancing his cognitive abilities by learning about world around him. Leaning new words will encourage her to participate more in social situations. Just watch your child for a few minutes and you will see how each domain affects the others.

You can read my previous posts here

How to choose right preschool for your child?

Importance of Early Childhood Education

What is Early Childhood Education?

I am taking my blog to another level with Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa.

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