The reasoning, negotiating and cooperative stages are a minefield and are hugely challenging areas of development and significant milestones that need careful teaching and nurturing to develop. Whilst these cognitive developments are taking place there are many other complex areas of development taking shape too. A child identifies and understands symbolic and real artifacts that are meaningful to them to make cognitive connections that represent ‘time’.
An older child will get up and move towards an adult when they hear or see the scooping up of keys signifying it’s ‘time to go out’. This routine understanding means children associate specific things to certain times of the day, such as when a baby sees a bottle of milk and demonstrates their understanding of feeding time by gurgling and waving their arms in excitement.
It supports problem-solving, reasoning and cooperative skills and reinforces positive behaviour management.įor kids, their concept of time is built upon routines, which are established upon some basic core understandings. It’s a visual and practical tool that helps them begin to grasp the concept of ‘time’.ģ. It supports a child’s understanding of changes and transitions within their routines.Ģ. In my work as an early childhood educator, I’ve found that using sand timers is a fantastic method for helping kids through this development phase:ġ. If I was to ask you to hand over all your time-related devices such as your wristwatch, smartphone, diary or clock, how would you respond? Would you panic, laugh, protest or perhaps avoid the question? It makes us realise that we are so very dependent upon these devices to aid us throughout our hectic lives and very busy days.īut wait, let’s stop for a moment and ask ourselves: why do is it expected that children don’t use similar tools to organise and prepare themselves like we do? This is because young children are just beginning to grasp the concept of time. At this stage, it’s futile to expect them to cooperate fully when they don’t know or understand when things are going to occur or change in their routines. School is back and it’s business as usual… The kids are perhaps starting a new school or settling back into their schools, so along with a million other things to do within our own routines we have to get the kids and their daily schedules organised and that is by no means an easy task!
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