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Useful Literature in Child Development

Children reap many benefits from consuming literature during their development. Martha Crippen of Luther College states various benefits of child literature in her article The Value of Child Literature, but I will summarize it to a few points. For one, children become able to analyze what they are reading and develop opinions about the information they were provided. From there, they are able to apply it to their own life in the sense of how it relates to experiences of their own or other’s family cultures. Additionally, Luther writes that children are able to develop emotional intelligence from reading about characters’ stories and applying it their past and future experiences.

Culture: All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman

This book corporates elements that demonstrate why diversity and culture are valuable to children. The story takes place in a classroom setting, which I feel provides children with a stronger opportunity to understand why these subjects are valuable in their development. The authors choose to focus on elements that are highly visible to children, which helps convey the message in a more suitable manner. Through the illustrations and text in the book, I feel that All Are Welcome is a great choice to introduce children to other cultures so that they come to embrance diversity in their experiences.

Technology:  If You Give a Mouse an iPhone by Ann Droyd (David Milgrim)

This book does a good job at demonstrating the power that cellphones/technology has in our lives and what people may miss out on if they overindulge themselves in screen time. As stated in an earlier blog post, I spent a lot of time outside as a kid. We had video games, but my brother and I really preferred to mess around outside since it was less likely to bore us. Technology is an increasingly important factor in children’s lives, so I think this book was a great idea. The author chooses to focus on the negative aspects of phones and how can cause you to miss cool memories that could’ve been formed. I think this is a smart way to go about it, since children, like adults, also suffer from FOMO and may take the message more seriously because of this fear.

Nutrition: Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert

Eating the Alphabet is an utterly classic book that teaches children about healthy eating choices while also being a simple, alphabet book. By keeping things simple, I feel that Ehlert is able to introduce schemas into children’s heads that may cause them to think “hmmm, I’d like to try ___” which may lead to them trying some healthy foods they may have not sought to ask for before. Of course, nutrition is an aspect of child development that is pretty dependent on resources and SES, but it will still allow parents and children to put eating healthy in their considerations.

 

Reference:

Crippen, M. (2019). The Value of Children’s Literature. Retrieved from https://www.luther.edu/oneota-reading-journal/archive/2012/the-value-of-childrens-literature/

Developmental Milestones in Early Childhood

From ages two to six, a lot of things change. Children become more attuned to their environment and seek to explore their world more in-depth than they had before. Think about your own experiences as a child or your time watching another child grow up — how did you like to explore the world? I know that when I was a young, me and my brother would explore outside at our apartment complex nearly all day. While we were both past age six with a bit more physical ability, children begin to increase running speed as well as develop a smoother ability to gallop and skip at ages five and six. These skills are useful for enjoying the outside world that will introduce children to many new ideas and experiences. Additionally, many children are introduced to sports at these ages, likely due to their increased physical ability. I always wondered why we had to perform skipping and galloping in elementary school P.E. Now, I realize that this was to test physical development.

In early childhood, children also development an array of new cognitive abilities. Children become much more able-minded to learn in the classroom setting with increasingly complex topics. In general, children will have improved in the ability to sustain attention by ages five and six, which is why they typically begin Kindergarten in this timeframe. Using their sustained attention, children are now able to apply new abilties such as understanding Piaget’s conservation of number and mass (a flattened piece of clay is still the same as it would be in ball form) and applying natural explanations to events rather than believing in mythical explanations. In addition to this, children begin to understand aspects of the world from experiences and their own intuition, particularly in false beliefs. Children under the ages of five and six may have thought that a box of cereal could be full of cookies, but now they will likely understand that it is filled with cereal from using the depiction on the box’s illustration as well as their own schemas from eating cereal that comes from the box.

Lastly, you can also find important milestones in children’s social and emotional development. Early childhood is a period in which children have likely been introduced to peers in preschool or other childcare settings. This provides children the opportunity to do things such as learn by observing others and interact with other children in a (hopefully) friendly manner. Perhaps one of the biggest milestones children reach in this stage of development is the strengthening of stereotypes, specifically in the realm of gender. These stereotypes are particularly useful in identifying constructs and analyzing their world as the basic level. Unfortunately, these stereotypes may hold into adulthood which can be a bit problematic, but that’s a problem for later. During this period, children also begin to develop empathy and increase their ability with self-regulation and self-consciousness, which is useful in their interactions with other children and adults.

Reference:

Berk, L. E., Meyers, A. B. (2016). Infants and Children: Prenatal Through Early Childhood (8th ed.). New York City, NY: Pearson Education