Child Development, Milestones & How Children Actually Grow
Milestones, assessment, and how children actually grow and learn. One post live so far, more on the way as the For Teachers category grows.
Everything we write here is grounded in developmental research, not trends or guesswork. This is the part of the site closest to my own background, so I wanted to explain why it matters so much to me before we get into the milestones themselves.
Why I write about child development
Child development isn’t a side interest for me, it’s the reason this whole site exists. Long before EarlyChildhoodEduNet was a shop full of printables, it was years of study, classroom observation, and a genuine fascination with how a young mind builds itself.
I’ve been fortunate to spend time at a Reggio Emilia inspired setting, seeing what it looks like when the environment itself is treated as a teacher, and to learn from researchers connected to the Vygotsky Institute of Psychology in Moscow, the institution that carries forward Lev Vygotsky’s work. Those weren’t formal placements so much as chances to sit, watch, and ask questions, and they left me with more respect for the theory than I had going in.
I don’t claim to have it all figured out. I’m still learning, as an educator and honestly just as a person, and a lot of what ends up on this site comes from getting something wrong at home first and going back to the research to understand why. My PhD and my years of actually raising two daughters taught me roughly the same lesson, that theory is only useful once it’s been tested against a real, tired, three year old at the end of a long day.
That’s the standard I try to hold every printable to, not perfect, but genuinely thought through.
— Dewi Griffith, Founder
The theories behind how we think about learning
Piaget: stages of thinking
Jean Piaget proposed that children move through distinct stages of cognitive development, each with its own way of reasoning about the world. In the preschool years, children are typically in the preoperational stage, thinking that is imaginative and symbolic, but not yet fully logical. This is why concrete, hands-on experiences matter so much more than abstract explanation at this age.
Vygotsky: learning as social
Lev Vygotsky argued that children learn most effectively with the guided support of a more knowledgeable adult or peer, working just beyond what they could manage alone. This “zone of proximal development” is the idea behind why a bit of well-timed scaffolding, a question, a prompt, a demonstration, does more for a child’s growth than either total independence or being handed the answer.
Reggio Emilia: the environment as teacher
The Reggio Emilia approach, developed in Italy after the Second World War, treats the physical environment as a “third teacher” alongside parents and educators, and positions children as capable, curious researchers of their own world, learning through long-term, child-led projects rather than a fixed curriculum.
Why the theory matters for a printable
None of this is academic for its own sake. It shapes real decisions, why our worksheets open with a story instead of an instruction, why we build in a progress tracker instead of a test, and why we trust a three year old to lead a scavenger hunt rather than follow a worksheet indoors.
What “child development” actually covers on this site
Developmental milestones
General guides to what children are often doing, thinking, and mastering at different ages, without treating any child as behind for not matching them exactly.
Assessment in early childhood
How educators observe and understand a child’s progress in developmentally appropriate ways, without turning early childhood into formal testing.
Curriculum approaches
How frameworks like Reggio Emilia and play-based curricula shape what a “lesson” even looks like before school age.
The research behind our resources
The theory and evidence sitting underneath the printables and activities across the rest of the site.
Explore Child Development posts
Assessment Strategies in Early Childhood Education
How educators observe, document, and understand a young child’s progress without formal testing.
Child Development Milestones by Age
A general guide to what children are often doing and mastering at different ages.
Coming soonThe Reggio Emilia Approach, Explained for Parents
What the “environment as teacher” philosophy actually looks like in everyday practice.
Coming soon