Early Childhood Ages 3 To 7

Early Childhood (Ages 3 to 7)

Early childhood (3-7)

Development of prefrontal cortex

By early childhood, areas such as sensory areas of the brain are already myelianated and after that the motor areas begin myelination. During childhood, myelination of the prefrontal cortex takes place and the pattern of development goes on until adolescence. The prefrontal cortex is at the front of the brain that is involved in complex and cognitive regulatory behaviors. This rate of development and myelination differs from one child to another hence the differences in their skills and abilities. This part of the brain is evidently one that has the most prolonged development period as its development occurs throughout childhood and into adolescence.

This section of the brain plays a role in different types of functions; goal setting and the planning of a sequence of actions, inhibiting inappropriate reposes and working memory meaning that it keeps information available and accessible for short periods while being used. Therefore, the continued development of the prefrontal cortex area of the brain has an effect on a child's readiness to enter more structured environments of kindergarten and primary grades. This is especially because of its function as working memory (Tsujimoto1, 2009). This is because when a child enters the structured environments of kindergarten and primary grades they learn a lot of new things. Therefore they need to be able to keep all this new information as they learn it.

Children develop at their own unique ways and therefore there are some challenges that a child might face when they begin formal schooling like kindergarten. Some of these challenges include the inability to store a lot of the new information learnt, inability to plan anything they want to do, not being able to control inappropriate responses and so on. These challenges occur due to the fact that children develop at different rates and so does the prefrontal cortex of their brains.

Motor development

There are various motor skills that a child develops as they grow up; these are fine and gross motor skills. They include walking on tiptoes, holding crayons with thumbs, running around obstacles, dressing oneself, skating, unzipping a zipper and so on. However changes in motor competency can have an impact of the development and skills of a child within the cognitive domain as well as the social and emotional domain.one of the changes is the development of a child's visual system. The specific areas of the brain that are associated with the ability of focusing eyes and movements go on through the early childhood period. Therefore any changes in the development of the visual system affect the development of a child and their skills. The other challenge is balance which is important for the proliferation of skills that are exhibited by a child during their preschool years. For instance visual or inner ear problems might affect the integration of sensory information for good balance. Therefore when any of these functions is not sufficient to strike a balance then an individual may have difficulties in their development.

Young children at play