Developmental Theories of Children

My Thoughts on Developmental Theories of Children.

            In reading the Developmental theories of Erik Erickson, Jean Piaget, and Sigmond Freud I found them all to in some way relate to each other.  They all theorize of a building upon each stage or a scaffolding of stages and development.  A person has to pass/move through one stage to get to the next.  A person can get stuck in a stage or have a stage they favored and would like to stay at, but most move from one to the next coming out as the adult they have developed to be.  All the theories as a whole complete the whole of a human.  Erikson’s theory relate to a human’s social and emotional development, Piaget’s theory relates to Cognitive and Logical development, and Freud’s theory related to physical and sexual development.  Each alone has its own points, but if you take them in correlation with each other the picture is much more rounded.  Just as a human has many different aspects so should the developmental theories that make up its ideal adult.  As a teacher of children passing through all of these developmental stages it is our job to look at all of the theories and take the best ideas from each of them, make them our own, and find a way to educate children as they go through these stages.  If we can match our teaching with the developmental stage the child is at their learning will be the most efficient it can be.  The child will hopefully benefit greatly and become the ideal adult in the future.  We are responsible for building strong foundations.

           

Importance of Processed Art

                                          

Process Art vs. Product Art

Besides the parent a teacher is a great asset for fostering that creative thinking.  The first and easiest way to start fostering creativity is to develop an activity that is more about the process the children are going through and the problem solving and critical thinking they are using to work through the activity verses the end result of the activity.  Think about an art activity that a child can do.  If a teacher says please draw a picture of yourself.  The teacher gives the children white paper, crayons, and a mirror.  Now granted not all the pictures will look exactly the same, but they will be relatively similar and there was not a lot of critical thinking used to complete the activity.  Let’s do the same activity, but let the children use what ever supplies they choose to use.  The teacher has a large array of supplies from paints, crayons to yarn, sequins, etc.  In this activity not only do the children have to think about what they look like, but they also have to figure out what to use, how to use it, and how to make it look like them.  I can guarantee you that not only will they be all elaborate self portraits, but they will all be completely different.  By just changing a few things the activity has challenged them to use a higher order of thinking and creativity.  This is a prime example of process art verses product art.  The process of the art activity compared to get to the end result of the art activity.