Early Childhood
Physical and motor development
Growth slows relative to infancy. Gross motor skills include running, hopping, climbing and pedalling. Fine motor skills include drawing, buttoning and using scissors; handedness emerges. Brain growth and myelination support coordination and self-regulation.
Cognitive and language development
Piaget's preoperational stage, about 2 to 7 years, brings symbolic thought, pretend play and rapid language expansion, but also egocentrism, centration, irreversibility and animism. Vocabulary grows quickly; grammar becomes more complex; private speech appears.
Play and socialisation
Parten's play sequence is solitary, onlooker, parallel, associative and cooperative. Play supports language, self-regulation and perspective-taking. Socialisation moves from family to peers and preschool; sharing and turn-taking are learned with guidance.
Emotional development
Emotions become differentiated; self-conscious emotions such as shame, guilt and pride emerge with self-awareness. Erikson's psychosocial task is initiative versus guilt. Temper tantrums reflect limited regulation, not manipulation.
Worked example
A 4-year-old says a tall thin glass has more water than a short wide glass holding the same amount. Reasoning: the child centres on height and ignores width; this is centration and irreversibility of preoperational thought. The correct interpretation is a normal stage limitation, not a maths deficit.
Traps
Do not say preoperational children cannot use symbols; they can, but logic is limited. Do not describe parallel play as cooperative. Do not treat egocentrism as selfishness. Do not apply conservation before concrete operations.