Cognitive Stages Of Development: Fine And Gross Motor Skills

Name Institution Course Date Cognitive stages of development Cognitive development is a theory that explains how children actively construct knowledge as they explore and manipulate the world. The cognitive development stages were coined from Paget's stage of development, a blueprint that describes the stages of intellectual development. These include problem-solving, remembering and decision making from childhood to adulthood. Children grow very fast physically and mentally in the early stages of development and at different rates. However, at each and every stage, there are important skills that they need to boost their self-esteem and learning. While observing my three nephews Carey, Josh and Mike aged three, I used the three stages of development. Fine and Gross motor skills. This process includes the ability to move, fine motor skills can be seen when a child's movement is controlled. The movement involves eye and finger coordination, which can be observed through processes like coloring and drawing. Gross motoring involves activities that involve high energy use like walking, jumping or climbing over things. At the age of three, Carey is able to handle different physical manipulations progressively; he can use his hands skillfully and can hold a crayon in a mature grip. He wishes to color an entire page, but improved hand-eye coordination makes him stay within the paper. Josh, who is four, has improved his hand-eye coordination and he can cut lines of his drawings using scissors. He can also draw something that ends up turning into an unexpected drawing, but that also indicates improvement in his imagining skills. Similarly, Mike has really improved his walking, he can steadily move around at the same time throw the ball without falling down. At the age of four, Mike can walk upstairs while holding on an object to improve his stability (Logan et al, p. 420). Emerging skills that support learning Emerging skills are skills that begin to show as the children grow, emerging skills are equally important in the development process; hence they need to be nurtured to ensure that they are of help to the child's learning process. From my observation Carey can express himself well in complete sentences of three to five words he says "I want”, “I am eating" and other words. He also matches the pictures with like he sees a tree from his book and says it's similar to one in the backyard. Whereas Josh recognizes patterns in a picture, he can easily notice the shape of the sun to be round and can also point out a cow after seeing it in pictures. His concept of tenses is improved and can formulate tenses, but has not understood the duration of time. Mike, who is older, can now form complete sentences using the right tenses. Mike has started developing an interest in words and languages and keeps reading his English textbooks to understand better. Emotional development As they grow, children's world opens up and they become independent, children focus is geared towards other adults and children outside the family, the outside interactions influence their thinking and personality. For example, at the age of three, Carey follows simple directions and ...