Child development - Study of a child

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Study of a child!

Name: Alanya Grace but prefers Annie instead of Alanya

Date of Birth: 10/5/98

Age: 3 years 11 months

Sex: Female

Date start of study: 11th April 2002

Physical (looks).

Hair: blonde, light, straight, shoulder length.

Eyes: blue

Size: height: 97cm

 (* Her height is average, she is about the right height for her age according to a centile chart in the text book child development by H.Brennand, J.Fairclough, V.Hall, E.Nicholson and E.Rees.)

Teeth: Annie has all her primary teeth, which include her incisors, Canines and Molars. She has all 20 primary teeth and has had them since she was about 3 years old. She brushes her own teeth

Health: Annie has good health as you can tell because she has good sound eating habits, normal opening of bowels, always interested in surroundings, contended child, breathing normally through the nose. She has very bright eyes, sleeps well, good, clear, firm skin, well developed muscles, no constantly runny nose, normal progress and development for the age group and weight and height average for the age group. This was taken from the child development book!

Personality

Annie is quite quiet but when she needs to ask questions she does. When with other she is lively and enjoys having children round her. She has very good behaviour is rarely naughty and if she has done something wrong she knows she has and she apologises. This shows a well-developed sense of right and wrong and socialisation. She goes to nursery and is excited to go when it is the holidays and she isn’t in nursery she thinks she has done something wrong because she hasn’t gone to nursery.

She is happy when she plays with other children and toys she likes to play with toys with her family/friends. She is sad when she doesn’t get what she wants or when she has done something wrong, she knows that she has, she will sit on her own and keep her head down until someone says it is ok.

Environment
Family members

Julie and Chris mother and father to the child, she has a twin brother called Cameran born 20 minutes before Alanya. These twins get on great without fighting and arguing with one another to me they care and love one another. If one of them gets hurt the other one goes and helps nurse them.

Home

They live in a new set of detached houses, which is 6 miles from St Helens town centre and about ½ mile from the nearest shop. The estate that they live on has about 60 + houses and is well arranged. There is going to be a pub and shops built on the estate.

The house has 4 bedrooms, bathroom upstairs and downstairs, kitchen, dining room, and living room.  The house has a garage on the side of the house and long wide driveway. Alanya has her own bedroom and it is fairly big, the windows are small so there is no chance of her climbing through them. The windows are high up; one of the other bedrooms is now a toy room for her and her brother. The house has a fairly big back garden and a front garden. The garage contains all their outdoor toys like bikes, scooters etc.

Physical development (large muscles) gross motor skills.

Annie has full control and support of her head. She can sit up with a straight back and a good posture. She can stand upright on her own. She can walk in a straight line. She can run about and go up and down steps with one foot on each step. She can ride a bike using stabilisers. She can kick a ball and through a ball. She can climb up a slide on her own and is confident to slide down it on her own. She can hop, skip and jump from 2 feet. She usually jumps the last 2 steps of the stairs. She can use a normal swing but someone has to push her to get her started, then she will begin to use her legs for a short while. (* Children are becoming more social and willing to play with other children. Speech modulating in loudness and range of pitch. Large vocabulary intelligible even to strangers, but speech still contains many immature phonetic substitutions and unconventional grammatical forms.

Fine manipulative skills. (The use and control of hands and fingers)

She can reach and grasp for objects. She can hold a toy in her hand and drink through a normal cup or glass. She can pass things from hand to hand e.g. a crayon. To colour she uses Palmer grips to pick up Lego etc. she uses pincer grip. She can do jigsaws and build towers using building blocks she can build them to there highest. She eats using spoon knife and fork. She can thread beads but sometimes needs help doing the smaller ones.

She can draw pictures, which you can realise what they look like! She can talk a lot with a wide range of vocabulary. She can paint, colour, draw and try and write letters. She uses play scissors and knows that they can be dangerous. She will share things with other children e.g. sweets, crayons etc. she doesn’t really have nightmares but she has food fads, when she doesn’t like something she will tell you that she doesn’t. She can match colours together she knows what most of her colours are. She can wash and dry her hands once been he toilet and before her tea. She can put her own coat and take it off and hang it up.

Intellectual development.

Annie has a good use of vocabulary. She can say 500+ words; make short sentences up like ‘ a yellow ball’, ‘my mum has gone work’ things like that. She can ask questions when needed and answer them if you ask the question. She can count from 1 to 10 easily maybe higher she can count up to 20 but sometimes needs help, she can say other numbers but doesn’t know where they come when counting.

She can sing songs and remember them. She can listen to a story and tell you what happens. She remembers pop songs tunes and she can read picture books and label objects and people with their correct names. She knows what her road is called that she lives in, and what her door number is but she doesn’t know her postcode or telephone number.

She asks lots of questions. She can also sort out simple objects and recognises long and short objects. She knows some shapes and logos of sports wear e.g. Nike and Adidas etc. she knows lots of colours but mostly the simple ones like red, blue, green, yellow etc. She can say if an object is heavy and light, and the different textures e.g. smooth, hard, soft etc. Her vocabulary is rather large and her sentences are getting longer day-by-day. She sometimes uses the incorrect word endings e.g. drawed, sheeps etc.

Emotional development. (Learning to handle and control feelings) and social development (learning to live with others).

Annie is shy with strangers, but is talkative when with friends in nursery. If she needs to ask a question she will. She plays with her brother (twin) and 2 children from next-door and she has fun playing with them. She plays with her family a lot. She seems to spend a lot of time with her extended family members e.g. Auntie’s, uncles, nanny’s etc. she goes to her family with her brother when her mum and dad are at work. Someone from her family will pick her and her brother up from nursery.  She has quite a lot of confidence in front of her family but not in front off strangers. She doesn’t have many tantrums, she will have odd ones but that is very rare.

She takes turn when she is playing a game and plays with other children fairly. She has a good relationship with adults and other children. She goes nursery and gets on great with her nursery teachers and the children. She plays with all the children in nursery. She plays with her cousins that go the nursery and her twin brother. Her older cousins attend the school as well. (* From around three years of age friendship will become increasingly important, and children will in many ways become less socially dependant on parents, family and carers.) She will come home from nursery and tell us what she has done in nursery, e.g. played in the sandpit, painted, played in the tent or dolls house. She will play with toys for along time and play with people. She likes playing with her cousins, as there are a lot of toddler cousins around her age. She knows their names and if she is in the car she knows whose house she is going towards. She will share her toys with her brother and her cousins and friends, she enjoys playing with them.

Annie has good set of manners and she uses them in the correct places at the correct time. When someone gives her something she will say ‘thank you’. She understands what manners are! Her attitude towards other people doesn’t change. Unless they say something to her that she doesn’t like. She treats people the way they treat her. Annie has good table manners; she will eat with her knife and fork but doesn’t always use her knife as most of her food is already cut up for her.

Annie can play in a group with children, but when the game gets tough or dangerous she will come out of the game and tell someone that they are playing naughty. (*From three years onwards, children are much more aware of other people, and their social circle needs to be much wider. Now is the time for them to attend playgroup or nursery on a regular basis. They need to learn how to react and respond to others, to be co operative, to take turns, to share, and to consider other people. They can only do this if they are around others regularly – but they will still need parent and family support and help.)

Encouraging social development.

 (* Children need to ‘meet and mix with other people in different situations to gain confidence, learn to respect, to be sympathetic, to communicate, to share and to become independent beings.

At the start family and regular carers do this. Later they mix with other children and adults. This extract was taken from the children’s development book the same book as used above to find the height.)

Identification of broad area of research

During my introductory observation of Alanya, I have decided to do my broad area of research on toys and the safety of toys and play. I feel that this is an important part of Alanya’s development because this is how she learns about her social and intellectual skills. My research is play.

I’m going to be looking at:

Development areas:

  • Physical
  • Intellectual
  • Emotional
  • Social

Types of play:

  • Discovery
  • Physical
  • Creative
  • Imaginative
  • Manipulative
  • Social

  • Why play is important to children
  • Toys indoor and outdoor and how they help children’s skills

Physical development

Physical development is about the development of the body, as physical development proceeds, the child acquires various physical skills

Motor skills, which require co ordination between the brain and the muscles. These skills often require a great deal of practice before becoming automatic.

Gross motor skills use the large muscles in the body and include walking, running, climbing, kicking a ball, throwing etc.

Fine Manipulative skills involve precise use of the hands and fingers for pointing, drawing, doing up buttons, using a knife and fork etc.

Intellectual Development

Intellectual development is development of the mind. The mind is the thinking part of the brain – the part that is used for recognising, reasoning, knowing and understanding.

A child’s mind is active from the time he/she is born. Day by day, as the child grows, the mind develops as he/she:

  • Learns about people
  • Learns about things
  • Learns new skills
  • Learns to communicate
  • Acquires more memories
  • Gains more experience

As a child’s mind develops, she/he becomes more intelligent. How intelligent the child becomes will depend on two main things:

  • Genes
  • Environment

Throughout childhood, genes and environment continuously interact to produce people whose minds develop in a great variety of ways. E.g. children vary in their ability to remember, their artistic or musical talents, skill at languages or mathematics, academic ability, cleverness with the hands, and whether they have a good understanding of people and their problems.

Emotional Development

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Emotional development is development of a child’s ability to control her/his feelings – is influenced by the child’s inborn temperament, her environment and her state of health.

Social Development  

Social development – socialisation – is the process of learning skills and attitudes, which enable individuals to live easily with other members of their community.

Social development follows similar patterns all over the world although social customs vary in different countries and even between different groups in the same country.

Activities, which encourage social development, are those, which bring a child into company of other people both inside and ...

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