Description
Chose one of the following age groups: birth to 4 months, 4 to 8 months or 8 to 12 months. Based on our readings, design/identify an activity for each of the developmental domains that would be appropriate for the age range that you chose. Be sure to tell why the activity/exercise that you chose is developmentally appropriate. Since there are 4 developmental domains, you will be listing 4 activities/exercises. DO NOT SIMPLY REPEAT INFORMATION FROM OUR READINGS.
Minimum 250 words answer.
Classmate #1:
For this week’s forum I chose to design activities for an 8-12-month-old. During these four months babies are really making some significant changes and were really one of my favorite ages when my own kids were growing up. Babies in this age range should be learning to walk, starting to babble, and really start to show their personality much more. The four domains of human development that these activities will need to cover are physical, cognitive, social-emotional, and language. It is possible and beneficial to develop activities that will involve more than one of the domains at a time. A great way to help develop fine motor skills as well as cognitive skills is hiding food under cups. I always played this with puffs. You would just need little bowls or cups and a snack type food that was appropriate for this age. You put a snack under one of the cups and the baby would need to find out which cup it was hiding under in order to eat it. The picking it up with their fingers to feed themselves helps develop their fine motor skills while the figuring out which cup had the snack is helping their cognitive development. Playing catch while rolling a ball back and forth is another great one. It can help develop gross motor skills by having to balance while sitting and help their social skills by developing a relationship through play. All you would need for this activity is a ball. Reading to the baby is a really great way to help them develop their language skill. Read with enthusiasm as well as pointing out words and being expressive. According to an article in The Science Daily, “New research at the 2017 Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting shows that reading books with a child beginning in early infancy can boost vocabulary and reading skills four years later, before the start of elementary school (Reading with children, 2017)” The last activity would be a find it type game. For this you would need objects the child is familiar with. Hide the toys in a place that is possible for the child to find. Then describe in short and easy sentences where the object it. It would help develop their cognitive skills as well as their language skills by listening and following directions.
Reading with children starting in infancy gives lasting literacy boost. (2017, May 4). Retrieved from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170504083146.htm.
Classmate #2:
Hello everyone,
I hope that you are all doing well and were able to enjoy the holidays! The age group I will be focusing on for this week’s forum is the 8 – 12-month age group.
The first activity I would like to discuss is an activity that will assist in physical development. The activity I would like to propose is creating a baby friendly obstacle course. To elaborate, items that the baby could pull herself up on, rest on, and work on crawling over. These activities would assist the growing infant in developing both fine and gross motor skills. It will also help the infant in regard to developing a sense of balance.
The second activity I would like to discuss focuses on cognitive development. For this activity, I believe that providing children with various household items that are slightly different from one another will assist children in learning about the different properties of objects. For instance, if a parent or caregiver gives a child a wooden spoon and a plastic spoon, the child will be able to work toward learning that these objects are the same but have different properties, nonetheless.
The next activity I will be discussing is an activity for social development. For this activity, I believe it would be extremely beneficial for the infant and caregiver to share several exchanges. Not only will this activity provide infants with the necessary attention, it will teach them the rules of conversation and socialization. It will also teach them that they are loved and respected by the caregiver.
The final activity I would like to discuss is a language development activity. I think that the activity I am going to describe is perfect for daily use. It could also be used throughout the day. For this particular activity, the caregiver would describe what is going on as he/she does various activities and such with the infant. By describing and labelling what is going on, the caregiver is helping the infant make sense of the world as well as providing the infant new words to use at that point in time or in the future. This activity also does not put any stress on infants to know what is going on. Because of that, the infant can focus entirely on learning and enjoying the time spent with the caregiver.
I believe these activities are developmentally appropriate because they can match the speed at which the individual infant is developing. These practices are also developmentally appropriate because they can scaffold on previous knowledge that the infant has (Deris, 2019). Thus, I think that these activities would be fantastic for a group of 8-12-month-old children.
I am looking forward to learning from everyone’s perspectives! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Reference
Deris, A. (2019). Lesson 5. CHFD212 D001 Fall 19. Retrieved from
Minimum 150 words answer to each.
