Explain How Two Activities To Support Child Development

The reason I carried out the two activities because the opportunity was given to me to plan activities for my key children, who had gaps in certain areas of their development. The ideas came from the previous assessments that had been carried out, which I used to make the implementations for the learning intentions and outcomes. The two activities involve the children actively learning through social interactions with one another, because the children have been paired up with a child and a supervising adult. Social interactions is important in a child’s development as it allows children to build friendships and be able to develop accepting attitudes towards other people, which links to Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory.

Kumpulainen and Wray
This links with Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development because the intention of carrying out the first activity is to help children develop independence and learn basic life skills such as counting. Children may have difficulties understanding a concept or skill. The adult intervenes by guiding the child so they can understand the concept and this scaffolds the children’s learning. Scaffolding benefits children as it allows children to master skills and concepts independently. Independence is a life skill children will need through out their lives so they can master in thinking for themselves and being
This allows children to develop abstract thinking related to science and maths, such as mixing water and flour produces a wet and sticky paste. The kitchen provides children with their own learning environment to allow them to have a hand on learning experience and pick up the routines of cooking, preparing and cleaning. The idea of the kitchen as a learning environment helps to promote independence, as it will provide children with the opportunity to do more to things on their own as Dowling (2014,pg 77) highlights that “Toddlers will thrive in a healthy environment…to do more and more for themselves.” The mathematical concepts in the activity will develop the children’s skill for being independent because children will pick up thinking skills, which children can apply to real life situations such as counting money and identifying conclusions. Skinner and Stevens (2012,pg 6) highlights that maths is a tool children will need in order to differentiate concepts and apply the appropriate