Human Development M3 written

chapters 3+4

Design a Pre-School Program
Tie each area of your preschool environment to the theories you have studied during this module.

Design a preschool program for children of one of the following age ranges:

birth to eighteen months
eighteen to thirty six months
ages three to five years
By…

Tell the age group for which you are designing the preschool.

What activities would you use to enhance the social, emotional, physical (gross and fine motor), and intellectual (cognitive) skills of your preschool students. Explain how each of these aspects of development (social, emotional, physical and cognitive) are addressed by which characteristics of your program. Tell what kind of space you would provide, what types of toys or other objects you would use, what types of assistance you would provide, etc. and tie them to each area of development.
Tie each area of your preschool environment to the theories you have studied during this module. Explain why you chose these activities with theories you have studied (you must include Freud, Erikson, Vygotsky, and Piaget; you may include additional theories of development as well) and explain how they address the four area of development. You must mention a theory with each of the four areas.

Writing Instructions

Length: 750 – 1000 words

References and citations should be in APA format. For example, (Lally & Valentine-French, 2017).

Note: For all written assignments, only the material assigned in the course should be cited. Show evidence of thoroughly reading and listening to the course resources.

General Instructions for Written Assignments
Your written assignment is intended to test your understanding of important concepts and discover how to sharpen your intellectual skills of analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and application. The intent of the written assignment is to provide an opportunity to more fully describe, explain, and analyze the books and other sources. The Course Information page “Research Tips for Students” has resources that can help you successfully complete written assignments.

ANSWER

Pre-school program

The pre-school program designed in this paper will target children between the ages of 3 and 5. This is the age that is referred to as early childhood. Children are developing rapidly in all areas at this age, especially cognitive and socioemotional development. This means that the school environment needs to cater to their needs in this area to ensure that they are experiencing healthy growth. At this age, children have more control over their emotions and thus pursue various activities that reflect their personal interests. At this age, parents are important, but teachers and peers have an influence on their life. At this age, children are developing fast. Their motor skills development is developed, and they start acquiring skills for locomotion such as running, jumping and skipping. They also can control skills such as throwing, catching and kicking. They improve their skills by running and jumping.

At age 3, children can briefly balance and hop on one foot, walk up stairs with alternating feet, and pedal a tricycle. They can also build a block tower of more than nine cubes. They can place objects in small openings, copy a circle, draw a person with three parts, and feed themselves (Lally & Valentine-French, 2019). So the activities in a class that has preschoolers aged three will involve activities such as building blocks. Building blocks will help activate their fine motor skills. It will also involve activities such as drawing shapes. They will be asked to copy shapes, draw them on their books, and then colour them. At this age, they have also started recognizing colours; thus, teaching them about colours will activate their brains and help them remember different shapes. These activities for children between 3 and 5 years are meant to improve their fine motor –skills. Building blocks, drawing shapes, painting and play-dough.

According to Piaget’s pre-operational stage of development, children between 3 and 5 years use symbols to represent words, images and ideas. This explains the reason for pretend play. At this age, it is important to encourage the children to involve in pretend play (Sanghvi, 2020). The classroom environment will therefore have toys that will help the children communicate using the objects in the classroom. For example, the play-dough can be used to make a toy they use to pretend play. They can create friends with the items and objects they create. The toys in the classroom will have drees-up clothes, kitchen and housekeeping toys like play dishes, vacuum cleaners, puppets and puppet theatre (Lally & Valentine-French, 2019). These toys will help develop their social skills as they play and interact with their classmates and will also help them develop their sense of creativity as they imitate things they have learned and also create a new world using the toys.

Piaget and Vygotsky believed that children actively try to understand the world around them. This means they are constantly trying to improve their cognitive ability by understanding things surrounding them. Children between 3 and 5 years are inquisitive and ask questions about their world (Lally & Valentine-French, 2019). In a pre-school situation, the best way to improve their learning ability is to ensure that they are exploring the world around them by letting them explore the surrounding environment, let them collect flowers and weeds and bring them to class. They can also sing songs to improve their cognitive ability. When playing outside, the program would involve the children smelling, looking, and touching things surrounding them. This allows them to explore the world surrounding them and also develop their cognitive skills using their senses. The materials involved in improving their cognitive skills include puzzles, a garden, and nursery rhymes.

Children are developed between 3 and 5 years, and they can take turns and share. They can play in groups, and thus, play is more involved. However, at this age, the emotions of children swing easily. They can easily change from laughing to crying. They are boasters and can stretch the truth about something or their abilities. They want to do things independently and are inclined to pee groups and make friends. It is essential to foster positive social and emotional development at this age (Lally & Valentine-French, 2019). To do that, the activities that would be best at this age include role play. This is where they play with their partners and fit into roles that they like. They could be involved in a class play where they cooperate with peers to role play. Sports are an excellent way to help children develop emotional and social maturity. They have to work as a team in sports, and in this way, they develop positive sharing habits and also develop friends. According to Erickson’s developmental stages, at this age, they can feel guilty and take the initiative (Orenstein & Lewis, 2021). Helping them play in groups and helping them deal with emotions as the teacher will help them grow as healthy people who can take the initiative and who are able to accept mistakes and apologize for the errors.

Different developmental theories come into play when dealing with preschoolers aged 3 to 5 years. At this age, they are experiencing many changes and rapidly growing. It is vital to foster an environment that allows them to explore and develop. The person guiding them also needs to understand that the children are growing and thus guide them well to foster positive development in all the developmental stages.

References

Lally, M., & Valentine-French, S. (2019). Lifespan development. Business and Social Science Division.

Orenstein, G. A., & Lewis, L. (2021). Eriksons stages of psychosocial development. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.

Sanghvi, P. (2020). Piaget’s theory of cognitive development: a review. Indian Journal of Mental Health, 7(2), 90-96.