Toddlers can be a toddler again
From 2021, pre-schoolers are no longer allowed to take 'school' tests. And a year of toddlers no longer counts as sitting down. These political promises are a breakthrough in years of discussion about the young child.
Image: Pixabay
A child may only go to group 3 if it knows sixteen letters, can count from 0 to 20, and back again, and can sit still at a table for half an hour. If it cannot live up to that, it will only have to toddler for another year.
This is the mores among many group 3 teachers, says Rienkje van Boekel, pedagogue and teacher at the post-graduate training young child specialist at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences. "If a child does not meet these criteria in early spring, the discussion starts in the team, especially about autumn students: is the child ready for grade 3 after the summer holidays?"
The culprit is the curriculum year class system, she thinks. The starting point of this system is that the same performance requirements are set for the same group of children, according to method. This is possible for the higher age groups, but not for toddlers. They develop in leaps and bounds. “Suddenly they can do something,” says Van Boekel, while they could not do it a week or month before. That 'something' can be: catching a ball, hopscotch, rhyme, but also recognize words and string letters together.
Toddlers can differ enormously. Even if they have their birthday on the same day. Every child develops differently depending on the interaction between brain development and stimulus from the environment. You notice where he stands by moving, talking and playing.
Pitfalls of seclusion
The development of the young child proceeds by leaps and bounds. How can you join this as a teacher?
1. The child does not color within the lines
Coloring within the lines is a fine motor skill that children master when they can control their wrist and fingers. When a child starts drawing, it first makes scratching movements from the shoulders. More circular movements come a phase later from the elbow and the final part of that development is drawing from the wrist and hand.
Pitfall: You cannot expect a child who is still drawing from the shoulders to make letters or to color within the lines. That only leads to frustration.
Then what: Encourage the child to engage in activities that stimulate sensorimotor development, the development of the senses, such as playing with unformed material: sand, water and clay. Draw with wax crayons, thick markers, in shell sand or shaving cream. Playing with blocks and construction material, with the track, stringing beads, dressing and undressing dolls, and so on.
2. The child cannot sit still
A young child has a natural urge to move. Movement supports broad development, including the ability to think. The degree of urge to move differs per child. Boys generally exercise more than girls. Being forced to sit still for a long time is unnatural. Only if the child itself is mesmerized by something, for example by an acrobat in the circus, can it muster a high concentration arc and sit still longer.
Pitfall: Do not continuously ask a mobile child to sit still and never let a toddler skip a break because they have not finished their 'work'.
Then what: Young children must be able to play freely indoors or outdoors twice a day for at least XNUMX minutes. Give a particularly mobile child a task: Will you walk to Master Arie to pick up a box of paper?
3. The child cannot yet write letters or numbers
On average, children can functionally recognize and 'draw' letters and numbers around their fifth to sixth year. For example their own name and their house number or their age. However, this is not yet writing. Learning to write is a complex activity that a child must be neurologically capable of. During writing, connections are made in the brain as a result of the interplay of, for example, eye-hand coordination and the control of fine motor skills. Other conditions are: sense of rhythm, spatial orientation, laterality, manual dexterity, line formation, auditory and visual analysis and synthesis.
Pitfall: Don't start learning to write too young. Methodical writing education among preschoolers is undesirable. At most, the child learns that he is not good at it.
Then what: Take the reading and writing test. If a child cannot make other words from the letters they already know, you can assume that they 'draw' the letters, not write them.
Want to know more about toddlers and the importance of play? Come to the nursery conference 'Game connects' that the AOb together with trade magazine The World of the Young Child organizes on Wednesday 3 April in 't Spant in Bussum.
You can read the entire article in the Education Magazine of February 2019.
