Nrsg 257 Physical Development - Assessment Answers
2 Pages / 270 Words
Cognitive development can impact and determine a child’s level of understanding. This was important when we developed the hand puppet role play, aimed at home and electrical safety.
Using Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, a 3-5 year old fits into the 2nd period: Preoperational thought for 2–7 year olds (Crisp, Douglas, Rebeiro, & Waters, 2017).
During this period of cognitive development, children begin learning to think with the use of such objects as symbols and images (Crisp, Douglas, Rebeiro, & Waters, 2017). Children are also only able to reason when connections can be made to concrete objects. Their language and level of communication begins to slowly develop, being able to complete small sentences. These young children also begin to learn cause and effect. Therefore, if I complete and action, there will be a consequence related to that (Burns, et al., 2017).
That is why we believe that using hand puppets to educate 3- 5 year old on safety is beneficial and in keeping with their cognitive development stage. The hand puppets and images we used are concrete objects that the child will be able to identify and will be able to connect these images with what was spoken about in the role play. Cause and effect was used in the role play when Captain Zap explained to the child that if they were to touch electrical cords or power points, this may lead to burns, hospitalisation and stopping of play. Therefore, the child can connect a consequence to this action, which may cause them pain.
I will now hand over to Marnie, to speak about psychosocial development.
Answer
Between the age of three and five years, a child keeps growing faster and start to develop both fine and gross motor skills (Gerber, Wilks, T., & Erdie-Lalena, 2010). This gives them confidence however it does not match with their ability. Therefore, their safety might be at risk since they may tend to do activities which they are not able to do. This, therefore, was of much consideration when we came up with the hand puppet role play which focused on home and electrical safety.
According to Press, 2015, some developmental milestone at this age includes hopping, ability to walk confidently, running at speed, jumping over objects with two feet, pedaling among others. It is important to enhance safety since this comes with excitability of children trying to try out everything by themselves even when they are not able to do due to various limitations such as size (Gururaj, 2013). This is why captain zap in the puppet tell the child that touching electrical cord and power point may make him get burn. At this stage, the child is also so excited at playing, for example, the child says he loves playing cricket and soccer. Therefore, informing him that getting burn will restrict his playing makes him avoid such things.
The puppet also brings out the importance of informing the child to leave things that may hurt them to the adults. Captain Zap tell the child that if he wants to turn something on then he should leave to the adults. With this, the puppet will, therefore, promote safety in home among children and also educate parents about safety related to injury avoidance in children.
References.
Gerber, R. J., Wilks, T., & Erdie-Lalena, C. (2010). Developmental milestones: motor development. Pediatrics in Review, 31(7), 267-277. DOI:10.1542/pir.31-7-267
Goodway, J. D., Ozmun, J. C., & Gallahue, D. L. (2013). Motor development in young children. In Handbook of research on the education of young children (pp. 103-115). Routledge.
Press, R. (2015). Developmental milestones of young children. (pp. 37-60). St Paul, MN, United States: press leaf.
Gururaj, G. (2013). Injury prevention and care: an important public health agenda for health, survival and safety of children. The Indian Journal of Pediatrics, 80(1), 100-108. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12098-012-0783-z
Spodek, B., & Saracho, O. N. (2014). Handbook of research on the education of young children. Routledge.
