Find resources / Group parenting programme / Child development / Intellectual development

• Understand how children develop their mental abilities.
• Understand the importance of everyday play activities to intellectual development.

Pose a starter question to the group:

‘What does intellectual development mean to you?’

Sometimes intellectual development is called ‘cognitive development’.

It is about a child’s developing mental abilities. Learning to communicate and to draw, count and read are all intellectual accomplishments.

The great thing is that encouraging kids in this area doesn’t take any special skills. Their development can be supported by whānau simply through everyday play activities.

The 7 intellectual development cards cover children’s development from shortly after birth to when they’re 3 years old.

• The developmental order remains fairly consistent, but the timing of each stage can vary between individual pēpi.
• Like all developmental areas, intellectual development can be influenced by how much or how little interaction a baby has with their main caregivers.

Give the cards to pairs or small groups. Ask them to read, consider and discuss them with each other, and then work together to put the cards into sequential order.

Have a selection of resources available to help with this and for the groups to check how they’ve sequenced them. (See the Resources section below for possible resources.)

Bring the groups back together to go over the placement of the cards.

Intellectual development cards [PDF, 680 KB]