Competency 2 – Details

Competency Standard II: To advance physical and intellectual competence

Developmental Contexts

Physical:

Young infants (birth-8 months) use physical movement, taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound to explore and learn about their world. By moving their arms, hands, legs, and other body parts, by touching and being touched, infants develop an awareness of their bodies and their ability to move and interact with the environment. By using their mouths to explore, hands to reach and grasp, whole bodies to roll over and sit up, they master the necessary strength and skills needed for the developmental stages that follow.

Mobile infants (9-17 months) delight in practicing and achieving new physical skills – crawling,
standing, sitting down and walking. They interact with their environment in a practical way, using all senses to examine and manipulate objects and begin to understand cause and effect, space, and
distance in this way.

Toddlers (18-36 months) continue to master physical skills at their own individual rates. Their learning and interaction with the environment continues to be active. Although they are gaining greater control and satisfaction through use of their small muscles (for example, painting, drawing, or working with puzzles), they need opportunities to exercise their large muscles often each day.

Preschoolers (3-5 years old) are gradually refining new skills: skipping, drawing, threading, throwing and catching. They are interested in learning subtle differences through their senses: sweet and sour, rough and smooth, high and low, loud and soft. They can attend and persist for longer periods of time when they are absorbed in using their small muscles on a puzzle or an art project. They also need daily opportunities to exercise their large muscles in free play and organized activities. Daily physical activities can promote children’s cognitive, creative, and language growth as well as their physical development.

Cognitive:

Young infants (birth-8 months) learn best within the context of their relationships with caring adults in a secure environment. Some of their early cognitive (intellectual) development includes becoming familiar with distance and space, sounds, similarity and differences among things and visual perspectives from various positions – front, back, under and over.

Mobile infants (9-17 months) actively learn through trying things out; using objects as tools;
comparing, imitating, looking for lost objects and naming familiar objects, places and people. By
giving them opportunities to explore their environment, objects, and people and by sharing children’s pleasure in discovery, adults can build children’s confidence in their ability to learn and understand.

Toddlers (18-36 months) enter into a new and expansive phase of mental activity. They are beginning to think in words and symbols, remember and imagine. Their curiosity leads them to try out materials in many ways and adults can encourage this natural interest by providing a variety of new materials for experimentation. Adults need to create a supportive social environment that contributes to learning by showing enthusiasm for children’s individual discoveries and by helping children use words to describe and understand their experiences. Children’s cognitive and social development are deeply connected.

Preschoolers (3-5 years old) continue their cognitive development by actively exploring their world and manipulating objects, thinking and solving problems, talking an1 engaging with adults and other children in a variety of roles and repeating and practicing their learning. Their increasing ability to describe objects and experiences with words reinforces their understanding of abstract concepts. Adults can expand learning through play, introduce a variety of new opportunities for learning and ensure that preschoolers experience a balance of challenge and success.

Communication:

Young infants (birth-8 months) need adults who are attentive to their nonverbal and pre-verbal
communication. Adults can provide better care when they respond sensitively to the individual signals of each infant. Infants’ early cries, babblings and coos are early forms of communication. Infants’ speech development is facilitated by an encouraging partner who responds to their beginning communications and who sings and talks with them about themselves and their world.

Mobile infants (9-17 months) begin to babble expressively, name familiar objects and people and understand many words and phrases. Adults can build on this communication by showing an active interest in children’s expressions, interpreting their first attempts at words, repeating and expanding on what they say, talking to them dearly, singing songs and telling stories.

Toddlers (18-36 months) increase their vocabularies and use of sentences daily. Although there is a wide range of typical language development during this time, it can also be an opportunity for early intervention if there are· language delays or difficulties. Adults should communicate actively with all toddlers – model good speech, listen carefully and provide a wide range of vocabulary. Language should be used in a variety of pleasurable ways each day, including songs, stories, instructions, comfort, conversations, information and play.

Preschoolers (3-5 years old) develop a wide range of abilities to communicate both verbally and nonverbally. Adults should communicate actively with each child – modeling good speech, listening carefully, responding actively to their expressions, engaging in conversations with them, and building on their verbal and nonverbal understanding and vocabulary. During the preschool years, early literacy experiences provide the foundation for later success in learning to read and write.

Creative:

Young and mobile infants (birth-17 months) are creative in their individual styles of interacting with the world. Adults can support their creativity by respecting and enjoying the variety of ways very young children express themselves and act on their environment.

Toddlers (18-36 months) are interested in using materials to create their own product – sometimes to destroy and create it again or to move on. For example, they become absorbed in dipping a brush in paint and watching their stroke of color on paper. They use their voices and bodies creatively – swaying, chanting and singing. They enjoy making up their own words and rhythms, as well as learning traditional songs and rhymes. Adults can provide water, sand, blocks and other open-ended and raw materials and opportunities for toddlers’ creativity and can show respect for what they do. Make-believe and pretend play appear gradually and are signs of emerging cognitive capacity to understand symbols. Adults can join in imaginative play, while helping toddlers distinguish between what is real and what is not.

Preschoolers (3-5 years old) can express their creativity in increasingly symbolic ways through the use of their bodies, words, and materials (building blocks, music, dance, art) and through make-believe. Adults can promote creativity by providing space, time, and materials for children to create and recreate their individual works, their own dramas, and their unique solutions to problems and by respecting the process of creativity as much as the product.