http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/227390698

Life and ways of the two-year-old a teacher's study

"A group of two-year-olds in nursery school present a composite picture of behavior that is characteristic for their stage of maturity and different from that of children at any other stage of development. Certain arrangements of their physical environment serve as unfailing stimuli to their activity. Steps or rungs inspire them to climb, inclined planes invite them to proceed up on foot or on hands and knees; apertures invariably draw them into their depths, and the sight of a tunnel assures their prompt traversing it from entrance to exit and back and forth again. To the trained observer, the major drive of the two-year-old is for activity and experimentation with his developing muscular skills. This book is a record of a teacher's experience--with two-year-olds. The organization of the material is as natural as the experiences out of which the record has grown. The examples used throughout the book to illustrate the conclusions drawn are only a small part of the vast amount of research which has gone into the making of this objective, tangible record of two-year-oldness--a record that will help others, less experienced and less attuned to the ways of children at this critical stage of development, to learn to recognize the multiplicity of small but significant evidences of growth in the capacity of the child to understand and to be understood. No particular two-year-old's personality is recorded here. The study is rather to provide an analysis of those general characteristics of a typical group of two-year-olds for the purpose of evolving certain fairly definite criteria for studying individual children at die same maturity level, growing up under similar conditions. The chapter headings indicate the- way in which the author has focussed attention upon those specific traits of the two-year-old which set him- apart from earlier or later stages of maturity: Physical Characteristics; In Action; His Typical Style; Joys and Trials; Learning to Talk; Trying to Understand; Meeting Problems; Beginning to be Social; Playing Out His Experience; His Sense of Humor. This study of the behavior patterns of two-year-olds is based upon the author's nine years of teaching children of this age and on the analysis of extensive records gathered by her and other teachers at the Harriet Johnson Nursery School (formerly the Nursery School of the Bureau of Educational Experiments). Mrs. Woodcock brings to the task a rare ability to translate narrative records of behavior into a richly-colored canvas of a whole section of child life. As such, this study has a distinct value as a reference text for the student of child development. And because the study has been presented in so readable and interesting a style--with such rare insight into the elusive and evanescent qualities of childhood, it has an especial value for all whose work revolves around the intricate and challenging tasks of understanding, rearing and educating young children"--Jacket. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Open All Close All