By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:
- Explain the factors that influence a child's overall physical health during the preschool years.
- Explain ways/interventions to keep preschoolers physically healthy.
- Explain the impact of poverty on healthy physical development.
- Understand the development of a preschooler's brain and how it impacts cognitive development.
- Understand the process and consequences of brain lateralization on development.
- Explain the development of gross and fine motor skills during the preschool period.
- Understand the debate about toilet training.
- Explain Piaget's conception of the preoperational child's cognitive abilities by describing the different abilities and limitations of the preschool child's mind.
- Explain how other theorists differ from Piaget in their view of cognitive development during the preschool years.
- Explain how the information-processing view describes development, specifically how it describes the preschoolers' understanding of numbers and their memory capabilities.
- Understand what Vygotsky's theory adds to our understanding of cognitive development.
- Understand the meaning behind the ZPD and how it is applied in schools.
- Illustrate different aspects of language development and how language development occurs in preschool-aged children.
- Describe how television watching affects preschoolers.
- Describe the different types of educational programs available to preschoolers and if and how the different programs impact development.
- Describe the meaning and importance of developmentally appropriate educational practice.
