Coloring in the Lines...

1. When I was a child, I would always color out of the lines. When I was very little, people told me it was fine to color out of the lines. But, as I got older, I was told to color inside of the lines. I got mad at the people that told me to color inside the lines because I wanted to do my own thing and if tat was coloring outside of the lines, then that was what I wanted to do.

2. To me, creativity is using your imagination or ideas to create art. I do consider myself to be creative, but only a little. I only consider myself a little creative because I like making art, but I don’t really use my imagination or ideas.

3. I critique my own work a lot. I always feel like my work needs to be absolutely perfect in every way. I feel like my work is not good enough if I don’t like the way it looks and one thing is out of place.

4. I try to stay both original and personal in my work. To do that, I try to portray my personal life in an original way that no one else has done before.  

5. Rejection has never affected my creative process. I know that being rejected is something that happens to every artist, and it is nothing I should be ashamed of. I know that as long as I keep trying, I will eventually succeed.

10. If I became the President of the United States, the first thing I would do would be to take the United States out of war. I would take us out of the war because we don’t belong there, it is not our problem.

11. When I leave this world, I would like to be remembered in a creative way. I would like to be remembered as the artist I never was and as an inspiration for other people.

Toy Story

Hi! My name is Britney and I am a Barbie doll. I have a lot of friends, and we always do things together. We have gone on numerous adventures together, but my favorite one was the time we went to the beach. It all started when the seasons changed and summer came. This summer was not a summer like any of the previous ones. Every day, it was very hot and very humid, worse than any summer before that. We usually get a pass to the local swimming pool, but this year they were closed because they were renovating the pool and locker rooms. Every day, we would sit around in our house and try not to do anything, since it was so hot. On one of these days, Courtney suggested going to the beach. We decided to go the next day, since we wouldn’t be able to spend a long time at the beach that day. So, the next day, everyone piled into two cars and off we went. When we were about halfway there, tragedy struck. Ken got a flat tire on his car, and he didn’t have a spare tire. For the longest time, we couldn’t figure out what we should do. Then, I got an idea. Half of us would go to the nearest gas station and get someone that could help us. We would bring them and a tire back to the car, and have them change the tire for us. Then, as we continued to the beach, we would drop them back off at the gas station. My plan worked, and we were excited to finally get to the beach. Then, as if having a flat tire wasn’t bad enough, we hit traffic. From the moment we hit the traffic, we could tell that we were not going to be going anywhere anytime soon. We turned on the radio and found out that a truck had rolled over about ten exits ahead of us and it was blocking all lanes of the highway. We didn’t know what we were going to do, since we couldn’t get anywhere at all. Finally, about three hours later, the truck was moved off of the highway and the traffic started to move. When everyone started to move again, we didn’t know if we should just go home or keep going to the beach, since it was about dinnertime and we would not get to spend any time at the beach if we decided to go there. We were just about to go home, when Courtney had an idea. Her idea was that we should still go to the beach, but rent a hotel room and stay the night. We could go to the beach the next day, and then go home. Everyone thought that was a great idea, so that is what we decided to do. We had a great time at the beach, and nothing bad happened to us on the ride home. We knew we had to do this again, so we planned a day and hoped that nothing would go wrong. Since then, we have gone to the beach plenty of times and nothing bad has happened to us. However, this adventure is my favorite and I hope nothing like that happens to us again.

Critical Thinking: Social Development

1.     Parents, other adults, and peers influence a child’s social development. Many children inherit their parent’s characteristics and personalities. Parents that constantly criticize their child will find that their child will most likely have low self-esteem. However, parents that give their children lots of praise will find that their children will most likely have higher self-esteem. Other adults can also influence a child’s social development by what they say to the child.  A child will either have high self-esteem or low self-esteem based on what others say to them. A child that has lots of friends will most likely have higher self-esteem than a child that does not have a lot of friends.

2.     A parent should let their child make some social mistakes by themselves. The mistakes should be ones that will help their child in the future, not ones that will ruin the rest of their life. The only time a parent should intervene is when the child is putting something or someone in jeopardy, or when the child is going to be greatly affected by what they are about to do.

3.     There are many connections between social and emotional needs. One of the connections is that a child needs to feel good about themselves in order to reach out for friendships. On the flipside, a child may need friends for support and to feel good about themselves.

4.     This fourteen year-old has not been taught interpersonal skills. This child has not been taught to wait their turn. The child has not learned/been taught that it is important to wait your turn for things. This lesson should be taught at an early age, so the child will know how to behave as they grow older. This lesson should be taught by telling the child that they need to learn to wait their turn to do things. If the child does not wait their turn, then there will be consequences until they learn to do so.

5.     I would handle the first situation by being firm, and telling my ten-year-old that they are not getting the game, even though he says that all of his friends have it. Chances are, most of his friends do not actually have it and he will just have to wait until he is older to get the game. I would handle the second situation by making my child apologize to the older woman. Then, I would tell them that it is important to wait their turn to get somewhere, and that they have to be respectful of people that are older that them. I would handle the third situation by telling my child that even though it seems like a big deal right now, it will not be such a big deal later on. I would tell them that gymnastics is not all about winning. It is about being part of a team and having fun, no matter what happens. I would handle the fourth situation by telling my children that it doesn’t matter who broke the toy. The toy is now broken, and there is nothing we can do about it. There are other toys to play with, not just this one. I would handle the last situation by letting my child know that it is okay to meet new people. I would tell them that nothing will happen to them, and I will be right beside them the whole time. 

Social Development Theories

Vygotsky:

Vygotsky says that through play, a child will develop an abstract meaning that is separate from objects in the world. He says that this is a critical feature in the development of higher mental functions. One of his most famous examples is a child wanting to ride a horse, but they can’t. If the child is younger than three years old, they will most likely throw a tantrum. But, if the child is three years old or older, they will most likely pick up a stick and ride it around, pretending that it is a horse. Vygotsky also says that the rules of behavior that go unnoticed in daily life are consciously acquired through play. The child will ignore what their impulse is trying to tell them because of the rules of whatever they are playing.

Piaget:
Piaget believes that play is almost pure assimilation without any attempt to adapt to outer reality. His famous example is a child playing with a block. When a child is playing “airplane” with a block, he/she is unconcerned about what the airplane needs to look like to defy gravity or overcome air pressure. The child is just playing with the blocks, imitating what he/she has seen. However, if a house burned down in the area where a preschool was, then if the child was playing with the blocks, their house might “catch fire.” They would pretend to be firemen, saving the people in the house. Piaget says that as they do this, they are making a serious attempt to accommodate the reality of what they have seen or heard.

Erikson:

Erikson believed that play is very important in the early stages of a child’s development. He says it offers a safe place for a child to go when there are conflicts in the child’s life. He also says that play is a safe world where the consequences are not strong at all and the limits are not rigid. The child can be the authoritarian – the one stopping things, not the one being stopped. The last thing he said was that play affords the exploration and manipulation of ideas and relationships without too much shame, guilt, and doubt.

       

I think Erikson’s theory is most correct. When a little kid is playing by themselves, they don’t really know what is going on in the world around them. They are in their own world, and they feel protected for what is going on in their life. These three theories do not really contradict each other. They have their differences, but they also have their similarities. These theories can work together to help people understand social development in children more thoroughly, but only parts of social development. These theories only cover the play part of social development, not every other aspect of it.

Play

To play means to engage in some sort of physical activity for enjoyment instead of for a serious purpose. There are seven different stages of play. The first stage of play lasts from when a child is born to when they are six months old. They look at adults closely, put things into their mouth, touch things with their hands, and play alone with toys. The second stage lasts from when the child is six months old to when they are one year old. The child explores things through the mouth and hands by touching objects. The look at and imitate adults. They copy adults, like simple games, and explore toys alone. The third stage lasts from when the child is one to when they are one and a half. The child will learn through trial and error and repeat actions that they have liked. They will start to play with grown-ups and start to notice other children. They will play alone. The fourth stage lasts from when the child is one and a half to two years old. They will still explore things with their mouth and learn through trial and error. They will copy adults and other children, and they will look at other children, but they will not play with them. They like playing with adults, as well as themselves, and they like repetitive actions. The fifth stage of play lasts from when a child is three to when a child is four. They will recognize shapes, letter, and colors, and they will solve jigsaw puzzles through a mixture of thinking and trial and error. They will play and take turns with other children, and will play imaginatively. They show more reasoning skills and ask more questions. The sixth stage of play lasts from four to six years old. The child will begin to use and understand symbols for writing and reading, begin to understand simple rules in games. They enjoy table top games, and uses reason. The seventh stage of play lasts from six to eight years of age. The child will like playing in groups and making up their own games with their own rules. They do not like to lose, and they like playing with kids of their own gender. To help children through the different stages, teachers can plan games that involve children playing in groups and cooperating. They can also plan games where the child has to complete something on their own. There are many different games that children can take part in to demonstrate play, many of which they do without knowing it. 

Being Gifted

To be gifted means different things to different people. It does not have a specific definition. To some people, it means being very intelligent and having a high score on an intelligence test. To others, it means being very good at a specific sport or activity. Research says that many people think of gifted children as children that have the potential to achieve beyond what is expected of their same-age peers.

A child that is gifted may not have very good social development. For the first few years of their life, they will be able to socialize with their peers. If the child is intellectually gifted, they may skip grades (in school) and be in higher grades that their same-age peers. Because of this, they may not have great social development because they will not have many friends that are their own age.

Some parents think that their children are special needs children because they are gifted. They think that their children need to be isolated from the rest of the world because they are unlike everyone else, and that they cannot be bothered while they are studying. Other parents don’t think anything of their gifted children. They treat them like a normal child of their age, just a child that is a bit smarter than their peers.

Gifted children tend to be perceived as very smart children by their teachers, though their teachers may treat them unlike the rest of the children in their class because they are younger than the rest of the class. Teachers may give them a workload a little less than the rest of the class, because they do not think that they can handle how much work is being given to the rest of the students.

To help their child integrate socially out of school, parents can take their children to camps of other places where their children can meet new people. This may help their child acquire new friends and help their social development. Parents can take their children to places that their same-age peers would go to, so they might be able to see some of their old friends and maybe reconnect with them.

To help social development, teachers can encourage gifted children to join clubs at school or play sports for a sport team for the school. Joining a club would help the children find out what activities they like and connect with older children from the school.

When in pre-school, children don’t notice who is gifted and who is not. They just see everyone as their friend and that they are all in the same class. They know that every child is different, but they only notice small differences. However, children in high school notice these differences, and some kids are mean to the gifted children because they are not like everyone else.

There is nothing wrong with being gifted, and children should embrace it.

Sibling Rivalry

Sibling rivalry is very common in families with more than one child. Siblings find many things to fight over, including attention from parents and sharing things. Young children usually want to keep their toys to themselves, and not share them with other people. This can cause sibling rivalry when children want to play with the same toy, but no one wants to share. Sibling rivalry can also be caused by children being around each other for long periods of time. Siblings may get tired of each other when they are near each other for a while, and they may start to fight because of that. Sibling rivalry can be caused by a lot of different things, but it all depends on how well your children get along and what your children fight about.

          There are some things that parents can do to end sibling rivalry, though they may take some time to work. Parents could try having their children talk everything out to see what is bothering them. They could teach their children to share their toys with everyone. It teaches children good traits, and also reduces some of the sibling rivalry. Parents could also have family times, when everyone is together and having a good time. They could make it so children need to spend time with each other, but during that period of time there would be no fighting.

          The reasons for sibling rivalry vary from family to family. The solutions for sibling rivalry also vary from family to family. There are many things to do to solve the problem of sibling rivalry, and, eventually, your children will grow out of it.