Application of Principles of Child Development Term Paper

Child Development

In observing Toby, age 5, his verbalizations, vocabulary, language, emotional state, and cognitive development are fully intact for his age group. As I observe his play time, he is at the family computer viewing web sites such as nickjr.com and pbskids.com. He knows and understands how to access these web sites and their interactive games that teach language skills, mathematical skills and social skills. Toby understands how to use the keyboard and mouse properly. By observing him, it is easily assumed that he is very sociable with other children because he answers the questions that the games are asking him out loud. Plus, he pulls his five-month-old sister closer to him while she is in her stroller watching him. I also observed that his cognitive development is appropriate for his age group because he is curious about science and likes to explore new things. Therefore, I feel that Toby's verbalizations, vocabulary, language, emotional state, and cognitive development are fully developed for his age group.

Furthermore, Toby shows excellent verbal skills interacting with the internet nickjr game when it asked him how many blue balls are there. He answered out loud, there are four blur balls before clicking on the icon number four on the computer screen. His mother comes in from the kitchen and asks him, which game are you playing, Toby. He replies by saying I am playing Dora the Explorer and he smiles. His sentence structure and vocabulary are in the right complexity for a five-year as it can be seen from the following."Five-year-olds' language continues to grow, and their vocabularies are expanding to 5,000 to 8,000 words. The number of words in sentences is increasing, and sentence structure is becoming more complex. As a result of adult feedback, five-year-olds begin decreasing their use of overextensions of rules for verbs and plurals, frequently correcting their own errors. Remarking about his trip to the beach, Seth said, "I put my foots, I mean feet, in the water, and it was cold." Five-year-olds are also using pronouns correctly. Seth used "I" to identify himself instead of using his name or the pronoun "you," which is used by others to identify him" (Wasik).

From there, according to Toby's mother, Toby's language skills fell behind before he was three and a half years old. He said very few words, almost non-verbal until that age. Therefore, Toby has caught up with his verbalization, vocabulary, language skills within his age group even though it was a slow development for him.

As I observed, I noticed his fine motor skills were well developed with one exception. He has the habit of gripping his pencil with the palm of his hand by making a fist instead of placing it in between his thumb and index finger. Other than that, Toby is able to string beads together, which shows great fine motor skills.….....