Child Development
Child development provides parents with information on physical, mental and emotional growth and development in children. Child development information can help parents know when they are expecting too much from a child as well as become aware of lags in development that may benefit from professional help.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
For every good book you discover, you may wade through a stack that makes you wonder whether the authors have any experience at all with young children. Remember, appropriate material for a four-year-old may not suit a younger child. Each book you select may have one or more of the following desirable and valuable features:
- Characterization
- Colour
- Fantasy
- Surprise
- Repetition
- An example of human courage, cleverness, or grit
- Aesthetic appeal
- Listening pleasure
- A game-like challenge
- Suspense
- Humor or wit
- Hope
- Charm
- Sensitivity
- Realistic dialogue
- Cultural insight
- Nonsense
- Action
- Predictability
- Onomatopoeia ( the naming of thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it, as in buzz and hiss )
Illustration help give words reality. For young children, illustrations promote visual literacy. Additional benefits are:
- Provision of pleasure
- Promoting of creative expression
- Development of imagery
- Nourishment of the imagination
- Presentation and exploration of a variety of styles and forms for the communication of ideas.
- Awareness of functions of languages
- Acquisition of the metalinguistic awareness ( defines as a sense of what printed language is all about )
The following is a series of questions you could use when choosing a child’s book:
1. Could I read this book enthusiastically, really enjoying story?
2. Are the contents of the book appropriate for my child?
a) Can my child relate some parts to his/her lives and past experience?
b) Can my child identify with one or more of the characters?
- look at some children’s classic such as Mother Goose. Almost all of the stories have well-defined character with whom children have something in common.
c) Does the book have directly quoted conversation? If it does, this can add interest; for example “Are you my mother?” he said to the cow.
d) Will my child benefit from attitudes and models found in the book?
e) Was the book written with an understanding of my child age level characteristic?
- Is the text too long to sit through? Are there to many words?
- Are there enough colourful or action-packed pictures or illustration to hold attention?
- Is the size of the book suitable for easy handling for viewing?
- Can my child participate in the story by speaking or making actions?
- Is the fairy tale or folktale too complex, symbolic, and confusing to have meaning?
f) Is the author’s story enjoyable?
- Is the book written clearly with vocabulary and sequence my child’s understand?
- Are repetitions of words, actions, rhymes, or story parts used?
- Does the story develop and end with a satisfying climax of events?
- Are there humorous parts and silly names? The young child’s humor often slapstick in nature (pie-in-the-face, all-fall-down type rather than play on words).The ridiculous and farfetched often tickle them.
g) Does it have educational value?
h) Do pictures explain and coordinate well with the text?
posted by Fauziah at
8:50 PM
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