Some of the most fascinating changes a person will experience occur during early childhood, from birth through eight years old. A child’s body and brain grow at an incredible pace; the capacities for language, thought, movement, and emotions will also considerably advance at this time.
According to the World Health Organization and many other institutions, the purpose of early childhood education is to establish the necessary environments for young children to thrive developmentally. Thus, the role that early childhood educators play in the lives of children is an essential one.
If you’re interested in one of many jobs in early childhood education, it will help tremendously to know how to orient your future classroom around key developmental milestones. Continue reading to learn about different techniques that all early childhood educators can use to enhance the development of children in their care.
Motor development
Physical developments in early childhood are some of the first witnessed in young children. Among the most critical are motor skills, which, if not fostered in the early years of life, can greatly impact a child’s growth and independence later in life.
Developmental psychology typically classifies this specific milestone into two distinct groups:
- Gross motor skills focus on large movements that use larger muscles like those found in the arms and legs. Examples of gross motor activities include walking, running, throwing, and jumping.
- Fine motor skills focus on small movements that use smaller muscles like those found in the hand or wrist. Examples of fine motor activities include writing, turning pages in a book, or buttoning a shirt.
Early childhood educators provide a wide range of experiences for young children to master these skills. Consider implementing some or all of these techniques:
- Encourage play – During early childhood, playing is practically a child’s job. Exploring the environment in dynamic ways offers children the chance to practice more complex movements. Giving the children in your care an array of tools and toys to touch and experiment with is a simple way to enhance their fine motor skills.
- Go outside – In terms of gross motor skills, there’s no better way to master walking, running, throwing, and jumping than being in the great outdoors. Schedule walks to a local park or even field trips to someplace new. If your center has space, you may even want to try growing a garden with your students; digging, planting, and potting will cultivate a lot of other fine motor skills.
- Exercise together – When it comes to exercise, why not start children young? Throughout your day, encourage your students to stretch, dance, or practice other essential movements with you. Modeling these and other actions will encourage them to want to learn how to move as well as you do.
- Get crafty – In addition to all of this physical activity, be sure to provide open-ended opportunities, such as painting, drawing, or collaging. These activities will not only better the children’s fine motor abilities but will also give them something special to take home at the end of each day. In our coursework at Pacific Oaks College, we teach our students to provide hands-on open, ended experiences with art materials. The focus is on the process, not the product.
Language development
Perhaps one of the most astounding development milestones of early childhood is the acquisition of language. And children acquire language(s) faster than they will at any other stage of their lives.
While grasping language is something that begins during infancy, there’s plenty you can continue doing as an early childhood educator to expose children to different language and bolster their development. To get started, consider the following:
- Engage kids – As an educator, you need to demonstrate the importance of communication, but your job isn’t merely to instruct the children in your care. You should always try and speak with them as often as you can. When speaking with young children, be sure to get down to their level, physically, if possible. Pay close attention to how they’re talking and observe all that they see and do mid-conversation.
- Promote “thick” conversations – The U.S. Department of Education defines “thick” conversations as those that give children many opportunities to communicate with you. To prevent conversations from going “thin,” try encouraging back-and-forth exchanges that allow a child to respond in his or her own time. Expand a child’s language comprehension by repeating their responses in greater detail and by incorporating novel words into the conversation.
- Ask questions – Questions get children thinking, and thinking gets children talking. Frequently ask the children what they’re doing. You should also ask them to provide explanations for certain events, to make predictions about what will happen next, and to make connections with what they learn to their own lives. For children that have trouble talking, offering them a choice (this or that) in your question will help them speak up.
- Read dialogically – When reading a book with your students, talk about what’s happening as you turn each page. Dialogic reading helps children learn new concepts, improve their vocabulary, and lengthen their phrases and sentences. While reading, point out the main ideas and keywords, be expressive and make gestures, ask questions, and even let children tell parts of the story when possible.
- Sing! – Language is, in a way, a kind of song. Singing with the children will help them improve their pronunciation, understand the rhythm of language, learn new words, and practice expressive dialogue. This technique can also be especially helpful for children who have a different native language than your own.
Socio-emotional development
Emotions and interactions are what make us human; as a result, learning how to manage them both from a young age is critical. During early childhood, a child should be learning how to develop the following skills:
- Social interaction refers to how a child connects with and relates to others and forms relationships thereafter. Key social interaction behaviors include taking turns and being helpful, along with playing and cooperating in groups.
- Emotional awareness refers to how a child recognizes, understands, and interprets his or her own feelings and actions. This awareness also encompasses others’ feelings and actions.
- Self-regulation refers to how a child expresses himself or herself in acceptable ways through thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Failing to meet these developmental milestones during early childhood can drastically affect the well-being of a child’s future self. As an early childhood educator, your task is to provide a supportive space in which the children in your care feel confident expressing themselves and responding to others. Consider the following techniques to implement in your own classroom environment:
- Structure your day – Create a set routine or visible schedule to help children see and know what to expect from their day. Feeling secure will help children express themselves openly and freely. You should also establish clear rules and expectations so that children learn how to compose themselves accordingly. Arrange your classroom with partitions to separate learning areas from getaway spaces for similar reasons.
- Model strong relationships – Children who share close relationships with their educators see their own socio-emotional development improve. Greet the children in your group affectionately by making eye contact and saying their name aloud, find time to interact with the children one-on-one as often as possible, and interact with other staff amenably so that observant children will follow suit.
- Promote friendships – Connecting with instructors is important, but it’s just as vital for children to befriend others their own age. Encourage friendships through planned activities or routines involving pretend play, parallel play, sharing, taking turns, and problem-solving in groups so children understand how to socialize with others.
- Share feelings – Sometimes, the best way to understand one’s emotions is to talk about them. Discussing different emotions through a labeling chart or other helpful images gives children the chance to describe what and how they’re feeling. When appropriate, talk about your own feelings. During emotionally trying times, always react to the children with comforting responses and offer them solutions like deep breathing to help them self-regulate.
- Celebrate diversity – Allow children to feel included by remaining sensitive to their different communities, backgrounds, and levels of ability. Support children who want to behave in ways that are culturally significant to them. For children with special needs, observe how they prefer to learn and advocate for this learning as much as possible.
Learn more about Pacific Oaks College
Do you want to provide a young child with the nurturing care and education they deserve? The more you know, the better you can accomplish this. Consider earning a degree in early childhood education with Pacific Oaks. Our offerings include both B.A., M.A., and Ed.D. programs, most of which you can complete either online or in-person. If you feel you’re ready to change the lives of children, fill out the form below to request more information or apply today through our application portal.
