EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND DEVELOPMENT

Lesson 30: Need and Importance of development of Skills during Early Childhood Period

Essentials for Learning Skills

Elizabeth B. Hurlock has mentioned the following essentials for Learning Skills in ‘Child Growth and Development' (1978).

• Readiness to learn-This is shown when the child has real interest in the activity and when the baby's efforts bring improvement.
• A strong desire to learn-Without this, the child will not put forth the effort needed for learning.
• Encouragement-Interest begins to drop when the newness of a task wears off and when learning becomes hard. Thus, the child’s desire to learn must be kept alive by encouragement.
• Chances to practice -To learn a skill, it must be done over and over. Many chances to practice will strengthen these coordinated movements.
• A good model-"Practice makes man perfect" only when the practice is a copy of a good model.
• Practice until the skill is well learned-How long this practice will have to go on depends on how hard the skill is. When the skill can be done without thinking, there probably has been enough practice.
• Guidance in copying the model-children need someone to guide their movements and to help them copy a model until they get the "feel" of the right movements. Then guidance can be relaxed.
• Supervision of practice- Close supervision is needed to make sure that children do not repeat mistakes. This supervision is most important during the early stages of learning.
• Few distractions- In the early stages of learning a skill, learners must give undivided attention to what they are doing. Anything that distracts them slows down the learning and leads to errors.