Preschool Cognitive Development Milestones In Children

Parents are the first teachers of the child. When the child is about 12 months of age or even earlier, the mother starts knowingly or unknowingly teaching the child. Similarly the child learns a lot from the baby sitter with whom he spends time in the absence of the mother. At some places government or local authorities have appointed child care workers to look after the children whose mothers go to work.

All the three have an important role in training the children. Training can be classified into different parts.

The first being development of skill to think. This is basically training the child to use his brain. Recognition of shape, color or a particular word forms the part of this activity. Reasoning is also a part of this activity. The child is taught to understand the language and also express himself using words. This is attained by repeating a particular word. Better still can be singing some poem with the names of fruits, animals or numbers. The child should be taught to make facial expressions while singing poems in a group.

He can be taught to recognise shapes like round, square or triangle by picking up different objects of the same shape placed in room. Teaching to recognise and speak few alphabets and numbers or names of animals is desirable. Often the child will speak incomplete word. Then he has to be taught to speak complete word in clear language.

The development of brain to synchronise the movement is called motor development. The child should be made to practice walking with other children at a particular speed, also running and jumping, hopping or throwing ball in a particular direction. This should be followed with writing or doing controlled movements like painting or doing some other art work like sticking of objects with glue to make shapes etc. Children in groups should be given chalks and made to write on low level black boards.

The next important thing is teaching the child is social skills, as to what is required from him when he meets other children or elders. When meeting children, there are different ways to welcome as compared to when meeting elders. At preschool age imparting toilet training to the child is also an important aspect. The basic manners should be taught to the child like saying please, excuse me, thank you. The children should be taught about basic hygiene like the correct way to brush teeth, wash hands before eating etc. If food is provided to children in school or they bring their lunch, they should be taught proper way to eat chewing the food and also basic table manners.

This way the child will be ready for preschool and will find it easy to adjust when in school.