Baby development program
Early Development - ZERO TO THREE
The first three years set the stage for lifelong success.
During the earliest months and years of life, the architecture of the brain is being built at an unparalleled rate in response to nurturing early experiences. Caring adults have a wonderful opportunity to foster feelings of trust and safety in babies, which helps toddlers establish a sense of self and become confident explorers.
Research shows that, to ensure a good start in life, all infants and toddlers need good health, strong families and positive early learning experiences.
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Children's early development is greatly affected by the mental health of the adults who care for them.
Why It Matters
Optimal child development, including during the perinatal period, is based on feeling safe, secure and loved.
Primary caregivers should have the capacities to be attuned, consistently meet their child’s needs, and nurture healthy attachment, though these relationships are often dependent on the caregiver’s own mental health and well-being.
Healthy development isn’t always a clear path for infants and toddlers. Early identification and intervention for children with developmental delays or disabilities can improve cognitive and social skills, lead to higher achievement and greater independence and promote family competence and well-being.
By the Numbers
Earlier identification and intervention is more effective and less costly.
16-18%
Approximately 16% to 18% of children have disabilities or developmental delays.
Infants and toddlers who have been maltreated are six times more likely than the general population to have a developmental delay.
1 in 3
1 in 3 infants and toddlers who received early intervention services did not later present with a disability or require special education in preschool.
Policymakers must understand the critical early years.
Take action for babies
Our Impact
We use evidence-based frameworks to develop early development resources for parents, professionals and policymakers.
Through regular professional development opportunities and our ZERO TO THREE Journal, we provide early childhood professionals the latest research on the science of early development. Our team of experts works to raise awareness among parents and providers for early intervention services, as well as advocate for the expansion of those services to meet all children in need.
We host an expansive library of early development resources, including our latest Podcast, The Earliest, which focuses on the role that caregiver and infant mental health play in early development.
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Early Learning - ZERO TO THREE
The foundation for lifelong learning is built during the
critical early years.
Babies are born curious about the world, and their brains grow exponentially between birth and age 3 as they develop language, motor skills, and early literacy. The foundation for lifelong learning is built during these critical years.
Early learning happens wherever babies are—at home or in child care led by qualified early childhood education professionals.
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From birth to age 3, a child's brain produces more than a million neural connections each second.
Why It Matters
Parents and caregivers are looking for guidance on how to help children grow and learn during their first three years, when young children are building more than 1 million neural connections per second.
Babies and toddlers learn best through loving, consistent and responsive relationships that support play and exploration.
By the Numbers
Not enough babies get high-quality early learning—because families and educators lack access to the services and tools they need to make it happen.
Only 32 percent of babies receive developmental screenings to identify delays or areas of concern.
Forty-five states do not require minimum levels of training, like a child development associate credential, for early childhood educators ofr infants and toddlers. In fact, many states require nothing beyond a high school diploma.
Only 37 percent of parents read to their babies every day.
Source: ZERO TO THREE. State of Babies Yearbook: 2022.
Our Impact
ZERO TO THREE is the go-to resource for evidence-based early learning information.
We provide parents and professionals with a library of resources that encourage literacy, communication and early math and science skills.
Developmental screenings through pediatric primary care providers and early intervention programs help address concerns early, but families can’t access these screenings without knowing they exist. Our team of experts supports educators, parents, and caregivers with evidence-based tools they can use today to promote optimal early learning.
We have three short years to build relationships, nurture brain development and solve for the inequity issues that arise from lack of quality early learning opportunities.
Policymakers need to provide ongoing support to parents, including child development specialists in pediatric settings. This can help parents be their child’s best teacher, increase education requirements for early childhood educator staff while boosting compensation and support and improve access to developmental screenings and early intervention to ensure development is on track.
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The ZERO TO THREE Critical Competencies for Infant-Toddler Educators™ address three core learning areas that best support infants’ and toddlers’ growth (social-emotional, cognitive and language and literacy)—all while keeping diversity, inclusion, and fairness at the center.
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Development program
Explanatory note
The proposed version of the "Development" program is the fourth version of the program, adapted for preschool educational institutions in accordance with the Federal State Standard for Preschool Education (order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation No. 1155 of 10/17/2013). In accordance with the Requirements for the structure of the educational program, the "Development" program ensures the development of the personality of preschool children in various types of communication and activities, taking into account their age-related, individual psychological characteristics.
The mental development of a preschool child is extremely diverse and dynamic. In the years of preschool childhood, changes occur in the development of the personality, in the communication of the child with others, knowledge and children's activities deepen. Highlighting the most significant characteristics of such changes, integrating all the others, is the main task of education. These characteristics are the basic units that determine the key directions of the child's mental development. As one of these units, we can consider the development of abilities as the main educational goal of this program. The program is aimed at developing children's abilities in the process of specific preschool activities, in the process of communication with adults and children.
The main attention of the authors of the program is transferred from the content of education to its means. Recall that the content is knowledge, specific skills and abilities acquired by children in different types of activities or in free activities (ideas about natural phenomena, about people's life in society, about mathematical relations: counting skills, coherent speech, etc.) . But for the development of abilities, it is not so much the knowledge and skills themselves (whatever they are) that are important, but how they are presented to children, and, accordingly, are mastered by children.
The actions that the child performs in the course of learning perform a dual function: on the one hand, they ensure the assimilation of the contents offered in the training, which is especially important for children of older preschool ages in connection with their preparation for school, and on the other hand, and this The main thing is to develop general abilities.
The task facing the authors of the program was to create special educational situations at each age and use the situations of the natural life of children that develop their general abilities to the maximum extent.
The theoretical foundations of the "Development" program are the following provisions.
First - the concept of self-value of the preschool period of development, developed by A. V. Zaporozhets *. According to this concept, the main path of a child's development is amplification, i.e., enrichment, filling the development process with the most significant forms and methods of activity for a preschooler that change and rebuild his psyche. Work in line with amplification does not imply accelerating the development of the child with the help of education (transition to the earliest possible solution of school problems), but expanding its capabilities precisely in the preschool spheres of life.
Second - the theory of activity developed by A. N. Leontiev, D. B. Elkonin, V. V. Davydov and others. According to their theory, the development of the child is carried out in the process of various activities. For a preschool child, this is, first of all, a game, as well as design, visual activity, literary and artistic. The development of the child's abilities makes him a true subject of activity, primarily play, the formation of developed forms of which occurs by the end of preschool age.
The third is the concept of ability development developed by L. A. Wenger** and his associates. By abilities, following Russian authors (L.S. Vygotsky, B.M. Teplov, S.L. Rubinshtein, A.N. Leontiev, L.A. activities, the success of solving a particular problem. Abilities are understood as indicative actions, which are carried out by using the means existing in the culture. For preschoolers, such means are primarily figurative in nature. These are various standards, schemes, models, symbols, at the same time - these can be verbally given rules and instructions. ***
Abilities allow the child to independently generalize his empirical experience, analyze a new situation, and find solutions to various problems. The main way of developing abilities is a constant transition from external actions with conditional substitutes (schemes, models, symbols) to actions in the mind. As a rule, children first perform actions that are new to them together with adults, then with other children, and finally on their own.
Abilities can relate to different areas of reality, different types of tasks arising from the interaction of a person with the surrounding reality.
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* Zaporozhets A.V. Selected psychological works: In 2 volumes. M., 1986. T.1. Psychological development of the child
** Development of cognitive abilities in the process of preschool education /Ed. L. A. Venger. M, 1986
*** Word and image in solving cognitive problems for preschoolers / Ed. L.A. Vengera. M., Intor, 1996.
Conventionally, depending on the task that a person has in relation to the surrounding reality, abilities can be divided into three types: cognitive, communicative and regulatory.
Classification of abilities by types of tasks can be carried out in accordance with the spheres of reality in terms of their representation in the human psyche. From the point of view of K.-R. Popper in the surrounding world, one can single out the objective side of reality - the sphere of human relations and the person himself. * The tasks assigned to each of the selected areas contain the need to develop certain abilities in a person in situations of interaction with the object world and the world of human relations - mental (cognitive and creative) - for interacting with the object world, communicative - for interacting with people and regulatory - for regulating one's behavior and activities. Mental abilities can be divided into cognitive and creative, cognitive, in turn - into sensory and intellectual.
Abilities of perception ( sensory abilities ) “are found in the form of perception of certain properties and of relations between objects and phenomena of the objective world or properties of the individual’s own actions » . The solution of various perceptual problems occurs with the help of sensory standards and actions for their use . (For more information about sensory abilities, see the Sensory Education section of the Cognitive Development educational area).
The development of intellectual abilities occurs in the process of assimilation of substitution actions, construction and use of visual models, as well as words in the planning function.
The process of mastering visual modeling includes several separate lines. The first line - expanding the range of modeled relationships. The most simple and accessible for children is visual modeling of spatial relationships. In the future, it turns out to be possible to introduce the modeling of temporal relations and then the modeling of other types of relations, up to logical ones.
The second line of changes concerns the degree of generality and abstractness of the modeled relationships within each type. At first, modeling of single specific situations is available to children, later children build models that have a generalized meaning and reflect the features of many objects and situations.
The third line of change consists in changing the visual models themselves with which children operate. The movement goes from models that display the external features of objects both in a specific and in a generalized form - iconic models, to models that are a conditionally symbolic image of relationships.
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* Popper K.-R. Logic and the growth of scientific knowledge. Per from English. Moscow: Progress, 1983
The fourth line of changes is related to the type of simulation actions performed. At first, the use of ready-made models is more accessible to children, later they can master the actions of building them on their own. Building a model includes two successive stages: building a model according to the current situation and according to one's own plan. In the second case, modeling acts as a function of activity planning and indicates the presence of internal ideal forms of modeling.
Creative the ability of preschoolers can develop in the process of solving tasks to create images of the imagination. The simplest of these images is created, for example, by objectifying an elementary graphic image (a circle - an apple, a ball, a ball). In the future, this is the creation of detailed images, images included in the plot, images-compositions in which the sample proposed for drawing is a secondary detail (O.M. Dyachenko)*
Much attention is paid to the development of the child's creative abilities in the program. They are manifested in the independent testing of new material, in the process of mastering new methods of action jointly with an adult and other children, but most importantly, in the formation of ideas and their implementation. In many sections of the program there are tasks aimed at developing children's opportunities at an ever higher level to create and implement their own ideas.
Special developmental tasks for the development of various means are offered to the child in the context of specific preschool activities, mainly in a playful way. In a playful way, in the form of communication with adults and peers, the child “lives through” certain situations, connecting his emotional and cognitive experience. Along with this, the child's own cognitive activity also develops - from children's experimentation (N. N. Poddyakov **) to the transition to solving cognitive problems and puzzles outside the game form. The solution of these educational tasks is offered mainly through the educational areas "Cognition", "Reading fiction", "Artistic creativity".
Communicative abilities are considered by us as playing a leading role in the social development of a preschool child. Communication skills make it possible to distinguish between certain situations of communication, to understand the state of other people and one's own state that arises in such situations, to adequately build one's behavior on the basis of this, to own ways of expressing one's attitude towards adults and peers.
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*Dyachenko O.M. The development of the imagination of preschoolers. Moscow: International Educational and Psychological College. 1996 g
** Poddyakov N.N. Thinking of a preschooler. М.: Pedagogy, 1997
Communicative abilities (unlike cognitive ones) allow him to assign qualities that make up a special side of the human psyche: emotional and personal characteristics, personal meanings. Developed communication skills can be characterized as actions of finding a compromise in a person's communication with other people, allowing him to satisfy his own needs and leading to meeting the needs of another person .
The formation of communicative abilities takes place in such forms of social life as communication, interaction, cooperation. The ability of children to agree, to observe the elementary rules of behavior in relation to each other occurs in the process of playing, communication, interaction of children in productive activities
and individual actions.
The result of the development of communicative abilities will be "socialization" as the mastery of ways of behavior that allow you to comply with communicative norms, to be accepted in society.
In the process of the child's interaction with others, playing, performing various tasks, the formation of regulatory abilities takes place.
The specificity of regulatory abilities lies in solving special problems: acceptance, retention, a at the level of self-regulation and setting mental (cognitive or creative) tasks, practical tasks, communication tasks*. Specific means, updated when the child encounters various tasks offered by reality, will allow him to begin to focus on these tasks and keep "in the task", achieving its solution.
The essence of the actions of regulation consists in the child's distinguishing situations of tasks, the conditions for their presentation, their retention , which allows, thanks to other abilities, to perform actions in accordance with tasks, as well as setting tasks.
Regulatory abilities have a multicomponent structure. Psychological regulation of behavior and activity can occur at the emotional and voluntary levels.
Emotional acceptance of the situation (and its proposed tasks), identification and mastering of methods of action or rules of behavior in it becomes a special task for the child , requiring mastery of special means and actions .
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* Bulycheva A.I. To the problem of the development of general abilities of preschoolers // Anthropological foundations of developing preschool education. M.: Russian University of Friendship of Peoples, 2009
The emotional component of regulation is actualized when a discrepancy is found between the goals, desires of the subject and the goals offered in the form of tasks in a situation in which a person finds himself. The resulting tension leads to the creation and then memorization of a certain emotional image (A. V. Zaporozhets *), reflecting, on the one hand, the features of the situation (its appearance, attributes), on the other hand, bearing the actual emotional “coloring” reflecting the meaning of what is happening for a person. The nature of the emotional, but rather emotional-semantic image, will depend on how the child perceives the situation in which he finds himself, what experience he has of being in such situations, what meaning they have for the child.
An arbitrary component of regulation presupposes conscious acceptance and retention of a task, a method of action leading to the achievement of a result - action in a certain way, according to a rule. Rules can be offered to a child in different forms: in the form of an adult's own behavior acting as a model, in the form of verbal instructions, in the form of various figurative means (pictures, signs).
Voluntary behavior is considered a neoplasm of primary school age, which develops due to learning activities. At the same time, the weak development of volitionality usually makes it difficult for a child to study at school. However, the development of elements of voluntary behavior is also possible at preschool age when performing activities that are specific and accessible to a preschooler. This may be the performance of children's activities (play, design, etc.), adequate behavior, actions with objects, elements of labor activity, and much more. It is important that the way of performing an activity, the rules of behavior or actions with objects become special task for an adult raising a child.
Rules can be offered to a child in various forms: in the form of an adult's own behavior acting as a model; in the form of a verbal instruction; in the form of various figurative means (pictures, signs).
Regulatory action "holding the task" on cognition and communication will be accompanied by a number of specific actions:
0005- actions in accordance with the condition, rule,
- control of the execution process,
- comparison of the result with a specific or represented imaginary sample
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*Zaporozhets A. V. Development of emotional regulation of actions in a child // Selected psychological works: In 2 volumes. T.1. Mental development of the child. M.: Pedagogy, 1986.
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The development of regulatory abilities involves the conduct of special educational work, both with children and with adults around them. The development of regulatory abilities is achieved in the program thanks to educational work in all sections, thanks to the special position of the educator, focused on the development of children, cooperation, personality-oriented interaction. At the same time, educational work on the section "Social development" aims to develop children's self-regulation and, as a result, implies the development of regulatory abilities.
The purpose of the program is
- the development of the general abilities of preschoolers: mental, communicative, regulatory in the process of specific preschool activities, their communication with adults and other children, cognitive research activities and other forms of activity that provide positive socialization, motivation of children contributing to the formation of a common culture of the individual, their positive socialization in society;
- protection and strengthening of the physical and mental health of children, including protection and strengthening of the physical and mental health of children, including their emotional well-being, ensuring equal opportunities for the full development of each child during preschool childhood, regardless of place of residence, gender , nation, language, social status,
- ensuring the continuity of the goals, objectives and content of preschool general and primary general education.
The goals of the program can be achieved as a result of solving tasks
- to create educational situations that contribute to the mastery of children by specific means and methods underlying cognitive, communicative and regulatory abilities, in accordance with their age and individual characteristics,
- organizations of a favorable developing subject-spatial environment,
- providing psychological and pedagogical support for teachers in order to master the methods of positive communication with children, methods and techniques of developmental education, methods for developing the cognitive, communicative and regulatory abilities of preschoolers,
- providing psychological and pedagogical support for the family and increasing the competence of parents representatives) in matters of development and education, protection and promotion of children's health, positive socialization;
Thus, the program is aimed at developing the general abilities of preschoolers: mental, communicative, regulatory in the process of specific preschool activities, in the process of their communication with adults and other children in all educational areas.
At the same time, full-fledged mental development is impossible without ensuring the life itself, the health of the child, general physical development, depending on the characteristics of culture, the specific conditions of the child's life. To ensure the life and development of the child in preschool childhood, a preschool institution takes on some of these tasks.
The program involves educational work with normally developing children. At the same time, the principles of educational work, which consist in creating conditions for the development of the general abilities of preschoolers, can also be applied in work with children with special needs. However, the methodological support of such work, according to the authors of the program, should be focused on the developmental features of such children and can only be created by specialists - speech pathologists. There are no such specialists in the team of authors of the "Development" program. In addition, the variety of features of the mental development of children, which differs from the norm, does not allow doing this in one, unified way (for example, for children with mental retardation, autism, hearing or vision impairments, speech therapy problems, etc. ).
Read the entire program...
Development program for children from 3 years old
Individual or group lessons in mini-groups of 4 - 7 people.
Individual approach to each child.
Group 3-4 years.
- Mathematics, speech development, the world around, fine and gross motor development, creative part, exciting warm-ups, work with handouts
For more information call: +7 (917) 841-79-91
/ Developing classes - Mom + Baby / Developing classes - Child development group from 3 years / Developing classes - Child development group from 5 years / Developing classes - Child development group from 6 years / Developing fine motor skills classes /
Our Studio will give recommendations and develop your child in accordance with age norms.
A child between the ages of 3 and 4 should be able to:
1. Count to three and show the appropriate number of fingers on the hand.
2. Be able to master concepts:
- one - many,
- large - small,
- high - low, etc. (antonyms)
3. Know the primary colors (red, yellow, green, blue, white, black).
4. Know the basic geometric shapes (circle, square, triangle).
5. Be able to compare objects by size, color, shape.
Be able to compare the number of items.
6. Be able to match a pair to an object with a given attribute.
7. Be able to put together a cut picture from 2-4 parts.
8. Be able to find and explain inconsistencies in the drawings
9. Be able to find an extra object and explain why he made such a choice.
10. Be able to find similarities and differences between objects.
11. Be able to memorize 2-3 pictures.
12. Be able to memorize 3-4 words that an adult repeated several times.
13. Be able to memorize and repeat the movements shown by an adult 1-2 times,
14. Be able to memorize any detail or attribute of an object.
15. Be able to complete the task within 5 minutes without being distracted.
16. Must find paired items. Be able to choose the right one from a group of objects. be able to pay attention to the properties and features of objects, to find similarities and differences between objects.
17. Know the names and be able to show domestic (cow, goat, horse, cat, dog, etc.) and wild (wolf, hare, fox, etc.) animals.
18. Know the names:
- 3-4 birds (sparrow, swallow, crow),
- 3-4 fish (whale, catfish, shark),
- 3-4 insects (grasshopper, butterfly, bee).
19. Know the names of the main plants:
- 3-4 trees (birch, oak, apple tree).
- 3-4 flowers (chamomile, tulip, rose).
20. Know what vegetables, fruits, berries, mushrooms are.
21. Must have an idea of the materials from which the surrounding objects are made.
22. Know the parts of the day - morning, afternoon, evening, night.