Physical development in early childhood / John W. Santrock Early childhood

1. Physical development
in early childhood

2. PHYSICAL
DEVELOPMENT
AT EARLY
CHILDHOOD
 Early childhood:
 Early childhood years are also called pre school years. It starts
from 3 years and ends at 5 years.

3.  Physical Development:
 Physical development in early childhood can be explained in terms
of body growth and change, motor development, sleep, nutrition,
exercise and illness.
 BODY GROWTH ANDCHANGE:
 Body growth include the changes in the height and weight and
also in the brain
 HEIGHT ANDWEIGHT:
 •The average child grows 2 12 inches in height and gains about 5
to 7 pounds a year.
 •The rate of increasing height and weight slows down with each
additional year at pre school years

4.  At this age, girls are smaller and lighter than boys.
 •The growth pattern of the children vary individually depending
on the genes and the environmental conditions (nutrients and
ethnic origin)
 BRAIN:
 •During the early childhood, the brain and the nervous system
continues its development but it is not as rapid as in infancy.
 •At 3 years of age, the brain is about three quarters of its adult size
and at age 6, the brain has reached about 95 percent of its adult
size.

5. Development
in early
childhood
Conti…
 At early childhood age, there is an increase in dendritic
connections as well as myelination, in which nerve cells are
covered with fat cells.
 •Myelination is very important for the development because it
increases the speed of information traveling through nervous
system.
 •Researcher also has discovered that also anatomical changes
occurs in the brain during 3 to 15 years.The whole size of the
brain does not change but the changes of local patterns in the
brain are observed.

6.  Study shows that most of the change in brain from 3 to 6 years
occurs in frontal lobes which is involved in planning and organizing
new actions and tasks.

7.  MOTOR DEVELOPMENT:
 It can be explained in the terms of Gross Motor Skills and Fine
Motor Skills.
 GROSS MOTOR SKILLS:
 •These are the skills that involve large muscle movement such as
walking, crawling or running.
 •The pre school children no longer has to make an effort simply to
stay upright and to move around.
 •At age 3, children enjoy simple movements such as jumping and
running.At age 4 and 5, children are still enjoying these but they
have become more adventurous than before.

8. Physical
Development
Conti…

9.  FINE MOTOR SKILLS:
 •These are the skills that involve smaller muscles, such as
grasping, drawing etc.
 •At age 3, although children have had the ability to pick up the
tiniest objects between their thumb and forefingers for sometime,
but they are still clumsy at it.They can build high block towers but
it may not be in a straight line.With time they improve their fine
motor skills and the child of 5 years have improved coordination
than the age of 3.7

10.  SLEEP:
 •Young children get 11 to 13 hours of sleep each night.
 •Most young children also have one day time nap.
 •At early childhood age, sometimes it is difficult to get children to
go to sleep as they drag out their bed time routine.
 •Children can also experience a number of sleep problems which
include
 *NARCOLAPSY(extreme daytime sleepiness)
 *INSOMNIA(difficulty in sleeping or sleeplessness)
 *NIGHTMARES

11.  One estimate indicates that more than 40 percent of children
experience a sleep problems at some point in their development.
 •Researchers have also found that those children who experience
prolonged sleep problems during early childhood have more
chances to develop depression and anxiety in the future.
 NUTRITIONAND EXERCISE:
 NUTRITION has a great affect on the physical development of
young children
 •Being overweight has become a serious health issue in early
childhood.
 •A recent study revealed that 45 percent of children's meals
exceed recommendations for saturated and trans fat, which raise
the cholesterol level and increase the risk of heart diseases.

12.  Major cause of the overweight is the fast food from the
restaurants which has high number of calories than home made
food.
 •Children eating behaviour depends on their care giver. If the care
giver provides them healthy food with proper schedule and with
no distraction, then the children will be healthy.
 •Childhood obesity contributes to a number of health problems in
young children. For example, physicians are now seeing type 2
diabetes in young children because of obesity.
 •The risk that overweight young children will contribute to be
overweight when they become older was documented in one
study. According to that, 80 percent of the children who were at
risk for being overweight at 3 years of age were also at risk for
being overweight or were overweight at 12 years of age.

13.  EXERCISE:
 •Exercise has an important role in proper physical development of
young children.
 •It is recommended that pre school should engage in 2 hours of
physical activity per day, divided into one hour of structured
activity and one hour of unstructured activity.
 MALNUTRITION:
 •Malnutrition is a problem for many children.This is because of
the unstable economic condition of their families.
 •According to survey, in U.S approximately 11 million pre school
children are experiencing malnutrition

14.  Because of malnutrition, most of the young children are
experiencing anaemia, which results in chronic fatigue.
 •Malnutrition badly affects the physical development of the young
children.

15.  ILLNESS:
 • Illness has a negative impact on the proper physical
development of the early children.
 •Cause of the illness in early childhood may be genetic and
unhealthy environment.
 •Parental smoking is also dangerous for young children.These
children then have a risk to develop asthma and cancer.
 •Due to poverty, also many health problem occurs to children
which then disturbs their normal process of physical development.