Infant Development Reflection
- 1. Cassidy Long Individual Reflection Newborn At the CDL, there were no newborns to observe. All of the children in the infant classroom were all older than this age, with the youngest being around 8 months old. I was not able to see any connections with this topic. Physical Growth, Health, Nutrition In terms of physical growth, it was easy to see the differences between the children in the infant, younger toddler, and older toddler classrooms. I especially noticed in the infant room how different the children were in size, even though they were only a few months apart in age. Even just between my first and last visit to the infant room, I noticed the children growing and maturing. Children who were so tiny had grown and developed so much in such a short time. The CDL seems to serve nutritious food as well, keeping the interest of the children in mind. I remember the children eating common foods for adults, such as waffles and grits. This helps them get used to eating these kinds of foods and consume vitamins and nutrients. Sensation, Perception, and Motor Development Vision is the sense that is least developed when a child is born. By around the age of 8 months, vision is almost fully developed. Infants also are born with a preference to human voices, especially the voice of their caregiver. Their attention is held better when they hear high-pitched sounds. In the infant room of the CDL, I noticed that whenever the teacher would speak in her regular voice to other adults, the infants did not seem to notice or look up from their play, but when she would speak in a higher pitch as she was walking over to play with the infants, they would look up at her. Even in the older toddler classroom, the children loved to listen to music. I noticed it caused them to dance around and move to the beat, stimulating their muscles. Finally, both gross and fine motor skills develop as children age. Gross motor skills include crawling, sitting, and walking and use larger muscles, while fine motor skills use smaller muscles and involve tasks such as grasping and reaching. This was very interesting for me to observe at the CDL because within a span of a few weeks, I noticed children moving in ways they had not before, such as only being able to crawl to finally being able to pull themselves to stand. In the young toddler room, I remember observing the children playing with play-doh and struggling to pinch it into smaller pieces, probably because their fine motor skills were not developed fully. Play/Foundation Theories about Cognitive Play is an important way that children learn. In the infant classroom, infants mainly engaged in exploratory play. They used their mouths to learn about the toys they were playing with, such as blocks and other hard toys. Young toddlers would engage in both gross and fine motor play, such as dancing and playing with play-doh. However, they did not engage much with each other while playing, something called parallel play. Older toddlers would use objects to stand for other objects and would often play with their peers. They engaged in pretend play and cooperative social play. One example of this is
- 2. Cassidy Long when they were pretending to have a picnic together and would act like they were eating the play food but they knew it was not real food. Play is important for healthy brain development as well as learning self-control. Cognitive Science and Intelligence As children grow older, their attention develops to be more focused and efficient. This is something that I definitely noticed at the CDL. For infants, it was hard to keep their attention for more than a few seconds if I did not switch stimuli or find new toys to keep them engaged. Younger toddlers would pay a little more attention, but it was still hard and they would eventually run off to play with something new and more exciting. The older toddlers demonstrated the most attention, being able to fully listen and wanting to do tasks that took more time, such as reading books. Theory of mind is also an important achievement children learn, which helps them to understand the emotions of others. I noticed it in the older toddler classroom when I observed one girl ask another girl if she was okay after a boy that was playing hit her. Language and Communication From birth, infants are biologically prepared to communicate, demonstrated by their emotions. They pay most attention to the human voice and prefer it over other sounds. Infant-directed (ID) speech is a useful tool in aiding with communication with infants, using higher-pitched and shorter sounds. This is effective in helping infants learn language because usually it is spoken more slowly than regular speech. Infants babble around 6-9 months and begin to use gestures to communicate at around 10 months old. This is something I observed in the infant classroom of the CDL, as the children were communicating with their teachers by using sign language. They would use gestures to say they wanted “more” food, and to say when they were “all done”. Young toddlers were able to communicate with more words yet would sometimes use incorrect grammar when speaking. One child in this classroom had not developed language skills as much as the rest, and she was not talkative at all and barely spoke one word. Although this was odd, according to research, it is normal to not be as developed at this age and she will probably catch up to her peers around age 3-4. Older toddlers were speaking in full or almost full sentences and were able to use grammar rules. Relationship and Social Development The relationships I was able to observe at the CDL mainly consisted of the relationship between the teacher and the child. Sensitivity of caregivers can help develop attachment relationships, as the more attentive caregivers respond quicker to the needs of infants. It was hard to assess attachment styles, but I would say the most common was secure attachment. It was also interesting to see the children begin to develop friendships. As early as 12 months old, children can start to prefer certain peers over others. Their friends tend to have similar activity levels and social skills as they do. I noticed this in the older toddler classroom, as the two most social and talkative children were the closest friends and played together often.