Understanding Children's Development

#FDEPart of the 5-volume "Introduction to Early Childhood Education" series, this volume focuses primarily on the development of children ages three through eight. However, it does include some treatment of the infancy and toddler years. It is organized around three sets of paired chapters, each set covering one of the basic domains of development: physical, cognitive and social/emotional. The first chapter in each case summarizes what is known about development in that domain and the second one shows how to observe and record behaviour and ability in that area and how to plan developmentally appropriate lessons based on one's observations. Because of its length and price, this volume can be combined with one or more of the other volumes in this series to produce a customized teaching package. This ability to mix and match volumes to fit an increasingly diversified market is the basic rational for this series. Each of the volumes in the series provides in-depth coverage of its subject matter. A lengthy introductory chapter presents play as central to children's developmental progress and shows how to learn about developmental levels by observing children at play.
The book also provides guidelines and illustrations for using such observations in programme planning. The concluding chapter discusses the major types of diversity and provides guidelines for using classroom diversity to benefit all children.