Navigating Pregnancy, Birth, and the First Year: A Comprehensive Guide for Expecting Parents

Intro to Child development

Week 2: Prenatal Development, Birth, and infancy

If you were educating expecting parents on pregnancy, labor and delivery, as well as the first year of life with their new baby, what would you tell them?

Design your own “What to expect” based on what you learned this week as well as your own experience.

Be sure to include facts about prenatal development, environmental influences, birth complications, and the developmental milestones of the first year of life.

What can parents do to ensure healthy development during the first year of life?

Make sure to support your answers with facts from the Lesson Material.

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Week 3: Gender Indentity and Adolescence

How does gender identity develop?

What factors (cultural, social, peers, siblings, etc.) do parents need to focus on to ensure a healthy overall identity in their children?

Take a few minutes and reflect on your middle childhood/early adolescence years. If you could go back in time and talk to that version of you, what would you say? Based on what you learned this week and your own personal experience, write a letter to the younger you. Keep in mind the developmental changes you were going through and give the younger you advice on school, peers, sports, family, etc.

Make sure to support your answers with facts from the Learning/Lesson Material.

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Week 4: Cognitive development and intelligence

Based on what you’ve learned and your own experience, how does pretend play contribute to a child’s development?

What qualities and skills do you think are important for academic and vocational success?

How many of those qualities and skill are assessed by traditional intelligence tests? What advice would you give to parents and teachers who want to nurture creativity and special talents with children?

Make sure to support your answers with facts from the Learning/Lesson Material.

Week 5: Memory and Language Development

Think back over your childhood. What informal, (outside of school), literacy and math experiences did you have while growing up?

Based on what you’ve learned, how do you think those experiences contributed to your academic progress after you started school?

Which concepts and/or strategies, from the content, did you use in school? Which strategy could you use now? How?

Make sure to support your answers with facts from the lesson material.

Week 6: Emotional and Moral Development

How do genetic and environmental factors work together to influence emotional and moral development? What can parents do to ensure healthy emotional and moral development with their children?

This week you’re going on a field trip – an internet field trip! Please do a search online for a current event that relates to the material in the reading this week. Give a brief summary of what you found and explain how it fits in with what you learned this week. Don’t forget to cite your source!

Week 7: Social Problem Solving skills and the media

How does the development of self-awareness and self-esteem factor into the development of social problem solving skills? Based on what you’ve learned, does the media (social, video games, music, movies, etc.) help or hurt the development of social problem solving skills? Please give examples to support your claim.

I have a challenge for you. Can you find an example, online, of a child, (any stage of development), showing positive social problem solving skills and an example with poor or no social problem solving skills? Start your search locally. If you can’t find anything, broaden your search to state and national news. If you still can’t find anything you may use social media. Please post the results of your search. If you found something, post the link/s, a summary of what you found, and your thoughts about it.

Week 8: Diverse Families and Developmental Assets

When we take good look at the families around us today it’s clear they are diverse. There’s an increase in single-parent, gay and lesbian, grandparent, blended family, and nontraditional households. It’s clear that the family plays a huge role in a child’s development. That being said, think about your childhood and your family. Who and what were you surrounded by, impacted by?

Now that you’ve got a better understanding of child development, please read Developmental Assets. Count the number of “Assets” you experienced as a child (note that some assets are related to the child’s internal attitudes and behaviors and others assets are related to external elements of the child’s world). After you count your experienced assets, post your number of assets and your reaction to your selected assets.

Based on what you’ve learned, do you think the number of assets someone has affects their overall development? Why or why not?

Do you think understanding child development can make someone a more effect parent, caregiver, and/or professional working with children? Please explain your answer.

Assignment:

Week 7 Assignment:  Child Development and Technology

• CO4:  Explore the biological, social/cultural, cognitive and emotional development of the child.
• CO6:  Engage in critical thinking regarding child development issues.
• LO2: Define the impact of peer relations, media and school in child development.

For this assignment, you will create a 10-12 slide PowerPoint presentation examining both the potential cons and pros of children’s use of technology like computers, tablets, smartphones, social media, etc. as it relates to their development.  How does technology affect a child’s cognitive, emotional/social, and physical development?

While you can use engaging visuals like graphics, charts, images etc. to enhance your presentation slides it should not be the sole focus of your presentation.  You need to clearly cover the requirements listed in the instructions below.  All slides should predominantly contain content.

Do not just list bullet points.  You need to clearly explain the information that you provide.  If you need more room for your explanation, go to the next slide.

Support for each slide should come from either the lesson content, reading materials or other appropriate academic sources. (.com sources are not acceptable sources).

This assignment counts as 25% of your final grade.  Please be thoughtful and take time to prepare your presentation.

Your presentation should include:

Slide 1: Title slide with your name, course, etc.

Slide 2: Introduction slide providing an overview of the topic and your main points

Slides 3-5: Three slides each discussing one potential con/downside of children and technology use. Each con should be supported by factual evidence and cited on the slide. Use additional slides as needed to explain the content you provide.

Slides 6-8: Three slides each discussing one potential pro/benefit of children and technology use. Each pro should be supported by factual evidence and cited on the slide. Use additional slides as needed to explain the content you provide.

Slide 9: Conclusion slide summarizing your key points about the pros and cons.

Slide 10-12: Reference slides listing all sources cited in the presentation, formatted in APA style.

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All writing for this assignment must be original.  Content generated by Artificial Intelligence is not permitted and will be addressed via the Student Code of Conduct.