Ideas for teaching growth and development?

I don't teach growth and development but my office mate does. She makes cards with a few words on them and places them randomly on the students backs. The other students make comments to them based on these cards and the student has to guess what developmental stage they are in - they group theirselves together - then she tells them if they are in the right group. They always have a good time with that exercise.

When I was in school, the teachers brought in children from infancy up to teens. (Most were children of the students. She had the older ones stand on a table or just had some of them playing together with toys. As she went over each stage we could actually see a child at that stage and note physical development as well as how they played, talked...etc. This made the education fun and it really stuck in my head the important things to know. Of course, this might take a little more than 30 minutes. We did it in an hour.

Good luck!

I use quizzes, which the students are required to prepare before classroom/ clinical experience. I use each question from the quiz as a springboard for discussion. Examples of questions on my preschool quiz:

• Which Erikson psychosocial stage do preschoolers try to master?
  • Trust versus mistrust
    
  • Autonomy versus doubt and shame
    
  • Initiative versus guilt
    
  • Industry versus inferiority

  [*]What’s the average height and weight for a preschooler?

  • 20 inches and 7 pounds
    
  • 30 inches and 21 pounds
    
  • 36 inches and 28 pounds
    
  • 40 inches and 40 pounds

  [*]The type of play that is most characteristic of the preschool period is:

  • Solitary play
    
  • Parallel play
    
  • Associative play
    
  • Cooperative play

  [*]The average preschooler should be able to:

  • Throw a ball overhand
    
  • Jump rope
    
  • Draw a person with facial features, arms, legs, and feet
    
  • Tie shoes well

  [*]The typical preschooler has a vocabulary of:

  • 300 words
    
  • 900 words
    
  • 2000 words
    
  • 3000 words

  [*]Which Piaget stage is most applicable to the preschooler?

  • Preconventional
    
  • Concrete operations
    
  • Tertiary circular reactions
    
  • Preoperational thought

I made streaming video clips to show different age groups interacting with others in their age group or with different ages. It was interesting to note that kids behave differently when you are not around. You can get a slew of stuff off TV! Be sure to include "sick" kids or kids with chronic problems as they may not behave text book style.