All educators especially on the Basic Education should be well -versed with their pupils. A thorough understanding would include appreciation of the Principles of Development i.e. (1) Development proceeds from the head downward. This is called the cephalocaudle principle. This principle describes the direction of growth and development. According to this principle, the child gains control of the head first, then the arms, and then the legs; (2) Development proceeds from the center of the body outward. This is the principle of proximodistal development that also describes the direction of development. This means that the spinal cord develops before outer parts of the body. The child’s arms develop before the hands and feet develop before the fingers and toes; (3) Development depends on maturation and learning. Maturation refers to the sequential characteristics of biological growth and development. The biological changes occur in sequential order and give children new abilities. Changes in the brain and nervous system account largely for maturation; (4) Development proceeds from the simple (concrete) to the more complex. Children use their cognitive and language skills to reason and solve problems. For example, learning relationships between things (how things are similar) or classification is an important ability in cognitive development; (5) Growth and development is a continuous process. As a child develops, he she adds to the skills already acquired and the new skills become the basis for further achievement and mastery of skills; (6) Growth and development proceed from the general to specific. In moor development, the infant will be able to grasp an object with the whole hand before using only the thumb and forefinger. The infant’s first motor movements are very generalized, undirected, and reflexive, waving arms or kicking before being able to reach or creep toward an object; and (7) There are individual rates of growth and development. Each child is different and the rates at which individual children grow is different. Although the patterns and sequences for growth and development are usually the same for all children, the rates at which individual children reach developmental stages will be different.
The changes that occur in a child’s development in the first few years of life are truly remarkable. Caregivers and professionals note children’s development as they begin to smile, laugh, sit, crawl, babble and talk. Children begin to socialize ad play cooperatively with other children. They acquire important skills to get along with cooperatively with other children. They acquire important skills to get along with others such as turn-taking, sharing and following instructions, as well as skills that will help them academically such as drawing, counting, reading and writing. Early child development usually follows a sequence, as the child needs to master one skill before he can acquire the next, but all children develop at their own rate. At times, a child may take a long time to master a new skill; at other times, he may seem to skip a skill in the expected sequence in his speed of development.
By: Rowena M. Lisud | Principal I | Carbon Elementary School | Lamao,Limay, Bataan
