Welcome to the My First Five Years Articles page. Here you will find more in depth information about our 6 streams of development.
It is often thought that creativity is about the arts. This can be true of dance, sculpture, painting and drawing, for example, as these can all foster creativity. But it is also possible to be creative in scientific ways. Creative-scientific explorations can involve problem-solving, testing an idea to see if it works or is true, investigating, discovering and inventing. Creativity was traditionally thought to be limited to a special set of ‘creative’ people, however, we can all be creative given the opportunity.
Sensory development is the way in which children learn to use their senses to explore the world around them and the way that they use information from their senses to help them to move, balance and respond to their needs. As children grow, they will use their senses of vision, touch, taste, smell, hearing, proprioception (sense of their body), vestibular sense (balance) and interoception (awareness of sensations inside their body) to explore and learn about themselves and the world around them.
The first few years of a child's life is when they are developing their early skills across many areas. It is during this stage in life when a child will be discovering all about themselves and others and growing their social and emotional skills. During a child’s early social and emotional development, there are many factors that can have an effect, both positively and negatively. In this summary, we’ll be detailing these factors, that usually fall into two categories – environmental and within the child. We’ll also be detailing wider ideas that are good to know, like why children’s mental health is important, emotional changes as they transition in life, and how to help in case you think a child is at risk.
‘Sensory play’ is something that a lot of children enjoy engaging in from a young age. Most people forget, however, that it makes for great learning opportunities for children of all age ranges.
Language is one of the six development streams at My First Five Years. Language is a skill that crosses over with and supports learning across all six of the My First Five Years streams.
Fine motor skills are an aspect of your child’s development that begins with their earliest movements. You may observe them grasping onto your finger or sucking their own hands when they're a tiny baby. As they grow, you might notice them exploring objects with their hands or starting to hold the bottle they're drinking from. These are all the very early stages of fine motor skills in young children.
‘Gross Motor Skills’ makes up one of the six key streams of development here at My First Five Years. It's a skill that underpins and intertwines with many other aspects of early learning. There is plenty of activities that your child can take part in that will help to develop, with many able to be adapted to any child's level of development and interest too!
It is common for children to develop skills at varying rates. Even siblings can hit milestones at different stages of development from one another.
A relationship-based approach to childcare is one that is founded on a strong relationship between the child, childcare provider, and their family in order to support the best possible development outcome for the child.
Speech and language development is a huge part of early childhood. However, tracking and supporting this skill area may feel difficult for parents who are deaf.
