Early Childhood

In general, people argue that childhood is the longest period in one's life span, during which the individual is relatively helpless and dependent by someone else. According to Hurlock (1980), childhood begins after the baby is full of dependency, that is approximately 2 years until the age when children are sexually mature, approximately 13 years for women and 14 years for men. His childhood was divided into two periods erbeda, namely early and late childhood. Initial period lasted from the age of 2-6 years, and during the final period sampaitiba time for children ages 6 sexually mature. This dividing line pnting, particularly used for children who are treated before they reach the compulsory schooling is very different from children who had entered school. While educators refer to as the early years of childhood as a pre-school age, as well as according to the Monks, and Haditono (2004) referred to as pre-schoolers.Children at an early age as the age at which children have not yet entered a formal educational institutions, such as the Elementary School (SD), and usually they stay at home or take part in various educational institutions such as pre-school playgroup, kindergarten or nursery garden childAccording to Setiawan (2002), which refers to the theory of Piaget, children at an early age can say as an age that can not be in demand to think logically, that the mark with the idea as follows:• Think in concrete, where the child has not daat understand or think about things that are abstract (like love and keadailan)• Realism, which is a strong tendency to respond to everything as it is real or tangible• egocentric, ie see things only from their own point of view and not easy to accept the explanation from the other• The tendency to think simple and not easy to accept something that is compounded• Animism, that tendency to think that all the objects that exist in their environment as having human qualities possessed child• Sentrasi, namely his tendency to concentrate on one aspect of a situation• Children's early childhood can be said to have a very rich imagination and imagination is often mentioned as early seedling emergence of creativity in children.It can be concluded that early childhood is children aged 2-6 years, which are at the early developmental stages of childhood, which has the characteristics of concrete thinking, realism, simple, animism, sentrasi, and has a rich imagination