Developmentally Appropriate Practices in PreK Midterm Review

Daily Life Activities

Activities that are part of people’s everyday behaviors (e.g., eating, sleeping, working).

Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP)

A term defined by the NAEYC to describe the practices grounded in knowledge or a.) young children’s development and learning, b.) individual children’s development and learning, and c.) children’s social and cultural contexts.

Standards & Benchmarks

Specifies the level of competence, knowledge, or skill that students in a program or grade level should demonstrate. The term standards, expectations, and benchmarks are generally used synonymously.

Guided Play

Children’s play that adults purposely influence

ex: Teacher gives children play-doh but does not give any further direction

Spontaneous Play

Play that children choose that expresses their own interests, motives, and behaviors.

ex: Instead of using crayons to draw. they might stack them up on each other which in turn lets them learn about rolling and sliding actions.

Teacher-directed Play

Children’s play that is organized and controlled by adults.

ex: Intetnionally planned games, sports, etc.

Constructivism

A view that in formulating and pursuing goals, individuals adapt to the world, thereby constructing an understanding of the world.

Sensorimotor Period

A broad developmental period, in the first 2 years of life, preceding representational ability as expressed, ex: in pretend play, language, and imitation of past events.

Preoperational Stage

Broad period between ages 2-7, betwwen the sensorimotor period and the onset of operational thought, the child cannot form true concepts.

ex: A child sees a block and labels it a car

Schemes

The assumed underlying biological and psychological structures that make sensorimotor and mental actions possible.

Assimilation & Accommodation

Critical conepts in Piaget’s theory that account for how the child incorporates or assimilates the world into existing schemes and how these schemes undergo change or accommodation as children adapt to the world.

Logical Mathematical Knowledge

A type of knowledge constructed by children that arises out of understanding the relationship between objects rather than the properties of objects

ex: number, spatial logic, classification, seriation

Functional Play

Play that is repetition of acquired abilities for the pleasure of repetition itself.

ex: Riding a bike, stacking blocks, throwing a ball

Symbolic Play

Another term for pretend play, where obkects or people represent something other than what they are

Dramatic Play

Play that is organized around a narrative theme or story

Games with Rules

Play that entails the construction and/or following the rules that involve agreements and disagreements with others

ex: Roxaboxen

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

A concept developed by Vygotsky to refer to the context in which the child’s understanding is furthered as the result of social interaction; that is, a child learns to do certain tasks somewhat above his or her usual developmental level with the support of a more competent peer or adult.

Mental Tools

The cognitive processes that are socially shared by people in a culture that assisst individual thinking, such as language, mathematics, or computer science.

Pivots

A term derived from Vygotsky’s work that refers to a child’s use of an object to represent other objects, concets, or ideas

ex: Using a book to represent a taco

Socialization

The developmental processes by which individuals acquire the ability to function effectively with others. Socialization to school entails the children’s ability to interact effectively with peers and teachers.

Symbolic Role-Playing

Play in which the actors take on imaginary roles.

Symbolic Distancing

The use of symbols that do not share similarities to what they stand for

ex: A block used to represent a phone is more symbolically distanced than a play phone.

Egocentric

An important concept in Piaget’s theory that refers to the fact that the young child’s thought is closely tied to immediate sensations and interests and not yet “de-centered”

Cause-effect Relationships

Understanding the relationship between a phenomenon (something observed) and the causes of what is observed.

Reversibility

The concept in Piaget’s theory that operational thought (rational thought) is only possible because mental schemes are organized in systems such that the effects of one scheme can be reversed or undone by another in the system.

ex: combining can be undone by decoupling

Onlooker behavior

When a child watches as others play, either not knowing how to join in or waiting for an opportunity to join the play.

Solitary Play

Playing by yourself

Parallel Play

A form of play where children play adjacent to one another but do not appear to be interacting; however, this strategy is frequently used for entry into an ongoing play.

Self-Regulation

The ability to control oneself

Mathematical Concepts

Understandings of the world that individuals construct that relate to geometry, numbers and operations, and measurement.

Mathematical Processes

How individuals develop mathematical understandings

ex: solving problems

Estimation

Refers to a judgment of the approximate quantity of a group of objects

Serination

Placing objects in order according to a common property, such as length, size, shade of a color, etc..

Classification

Grouping objects to one or more common properties

Numerals

Numbers

Story Play

An activity where a child dictates a narrative to a teacher that is later enacted by peers during circle time. Participation in the activity leads to children to an early awareness that language contains within the expectations of a responsive “other”.

Literate Behaviors

Behaviors that precede more specific literacy skills and have numerous forms of expression, both verbal and nonverbal, that fulfill the fundamental purpose of communicating the child’s needs, interests, and desires. For the young child, these larger purposeses of language provide the motivation and framework for later literacy development.

ex: Kids tracking, knowing how a book works, concepts of print!!

Emergent Literacy

The key features of this concept are that literacy begins to develop early, is ongoing and occurs in everyday contexts in interactions with others as well as in art, music, play, social studies, science.

Phonological Awareness

An awareness of the relationship between symbols and sounds

Phonics

A method used to teach people to read by correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters in an alphabetic writing system.

Big Body Play

Physically active play that can include running, throwing, jumping, wrestling, open-palmed tagging, chasing, and fleeing and is accompanied by relaxed facial features and often involves laughter, squealing, and/or exuberant screaming.

Loose Parts

Easily moved play materials that can be carried, combines, taken apart, and reconfigured in multiple ways. Includes either natural materials such as sand, leaves, or logs, or provided materials such as boxes, planks, tubes, milk crates, reused tires, containers, trays, plates, or funnels.

Miniatures

Toys that are small versions of common natural or manufactured objects or living things.

Construction Toys

Toys used to create new objects or models

Locomotion Toys

Toys that enable children to move themselves or materials from place to place

Manipulatives

Toys that teachers use to support children’s mathematical understandings or fine motor development

Play-ability

The quality that allows children to adapt the toy to their individual needs, purposes, and stage of development over an extended period of time.

Structure

The degree to which a toy or other object resembles the object that the child is symbolizing

Domains

Physical, Linguistic/Language, Cognitive, Social-Emotional

Milestones

Set of functional skills or age-specific tasks that most children perform within a certain age range.

Neural Plasticity

Capacity of the nervous system to modify itself, functionally and structurally in response to injury and experience.

Neurons

Type of cell that receives and sends messages from the body to the brain and back to the body

Synapes

Site of transmission of electric nerve impulses between two neurons or between a neuron and a gland or muscle cell.

Pruning

The removal of synaptic connections

Vestibular Senses

Movement, gravity, balance sense. Allows us to move smoothly.

Reflexes

Involuntary movements or actions

Gross Motor

Physical movements using the large muscle groups

Fine Motor

Physical Movements using the small muscle groups

Temperment

The way children respond to the world

Attatchment

Child uses the primary caregiver as a secure base from which to explore and when necessary, as a haven of safety ad a source of comfort.

Grammar/Syntax

The classes of words and their forms and functions. The arrangement of words and how we put them together for a specific meaning.

Critical Period

The early years of a child’s life from birth to the age of 5 where the brain is incredibly absorbent and rapidly taking in information.

Quality Language Experiences

Stimulate children’s vocabulary development and boost communication and learning skills.

Dialogic Reading

Children and adults having a conversation about a book

Executive Function

Skills that help us focus, plan, prioritze, work towards goals, self-regulate behaviors and emotions, adapt to new and unexpected situations, and ultimately engage in abstract thinking and planning.

Object Permanence

Knowing that an object or person still exists even when they are hidden and you can’t see them

Conservation Tasks

Knowing that a quantity does not change even if it has been altered

ex: stretching, cut, shrunk, poured