Week 9 · Chapter

Chapter 9 — Early Childhood: Physical and Cognitive Development

Child Development Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~40–50 minutes · Objective 6 (analyze development in early childhood: preoperational thought, Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, theory of mind, play, emotion regulation, parenting dimensions and styles, and gender development) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slides, the tutorial, the quiz, and the workshop all build on it.

In plain language

This chapter is about how young children's bodies and minds change from about 2 to 6. Their running, hopping, drawing, and cutting all get stronger and steadier. Their thinking gains symbolic thought (letting one thing stand for another, such as a block used as a phone), and it also has limits, such as egocentrism (finding it hard to see from another person's point of view). You will meet two theories that explain this growth in different ways, and you will learn theory of mind (knowing that other people can believe things that are not true). By the end, a child's surprising answer will look less like a mistake and more like a window on how the child is thinking.

Why you already care about this

Picture a family car on a dark road, with a 4-year-old buckled into a car seat in the back. The child stares out the window for a long minute and then says, "The moon is following us. It wants to come home with us." The adults in the front seat smile. Nobody taught the child that idea, and nobody will need to correct it for long.

That one sentence carries three of this week's ideas. The child gives the moon a want. The child judges the moon's motion from one spot, the back seat. And the child says it out loud to people who will answer, which is where a second theory starts. Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, two of the theorists you met in Week 2, would hear the same sentence and notice different things. Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) gave the course one of its most used words, and Wimmer and Perner (1983) gave it one of its most famous tasks. You will use all of them this week.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

describe gross and fine motor growth from about 2 to 6 in words, as typical ranges;
explain Piaget's preoperational stage and its gain, symbolic thought, and call back the play time sample's counts;
explain egocentrism with the three mountains task and tell it apart from selfishness;
explain centration, animism, and conservation with the conservation of liquid task;
explain the zone of proximal development and private speech, and credit scaffolding to Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976);
explain theory of mind and the false-belief task, and read record R5 with two theories in one plain sentence.

Carry this sentence with you: a surprising answer is a window, not a mistake.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 gave you the domains, the periods, and nature and nurture. Week 2 named the theories, including Piaget's cognitive-developmental theory and Vygotsky's sociocultural theory. Week 3 taught you to keep what a child did apart from what it might mean, and it taught time sampling. Weeks 4 to 7 followed the child from before birth through the first two years, and Week 6 taught Piaget's first stage. Week 8 reviewed that first half and added Parten's play categories with a 10-minute time sample.
This week: early childhood, physical and cognitive — motor skills from about 2 to 6, Piaget's preoperational stage, Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, private speech, and scaffolding, theory of mind, and early literacy.
How they connect: Week 6 ended with an infant who could hold an object in mind; this week that child starts to let objects, words, and drawings stand for other things, and starts to understand other minds.
Where we're going next: Week 10 stays in early childhood and turns to the social-emotional domain, with Erikson's third stage and the parenting-styles model.

Two earlier ideas carry this week. From Week 2, Piaget's cognitive-developmental theory describes thinking changing in four stages with approximate ages, and Vygotsky's sociocultural theory says thinking develops through social interaction and cultural tools such as language. From Week 3, time sampling records what a child is doing at set intervals. You will use both on the running case, the illustrative, unnamed child followed from birth to 15. This week's record is R5, written at 4 years in a preschool classroom.

1. Watch the body move: motor skills from 2 to 6

Stand at the edge of a city playground on a warm afternoon (an illustrative scene). One child runs to the slide, climbs the ladder, and slides down feet first. Another hops on one foot along a painted line, wobbles, and laughs. At a picnic table nearby, a third child cuts a paper star with blunt scissors while an older cousin holds the paper steady.

You already have the tool to sort these. Week 5 split motor skills in two, and the split holds in early childhood:

Gross motor skills use the large muscles of the body. In early childhood they grow from steady walking into running, jumping, hopping, climbing, and throwing and catching a ball.
Fine motor skills use the small muscles, especially of the hands. In early childhood they grow from scribbling into drawing shapes and people, using scissors, and handling buttons, zippers, and spoons.

Worked example — sorting the playground. Take the four movements in the scene and sort each one.

Climbs the slide ladder: large muscles of the arms, legs, and trunk, so gross motor.
Hops on one foot: large muscles of the legs, plus balance, so gross motor.
Cuts a paper star with scissors: small muscles of the hand and fingers, so fine motor.
The cousin holds the paper steady with two fingers: small muscles of the hand, so fine motor.

In words: two movements are gross motor and two are fine motor, and the test is the same one you used for toddlers, which muscles do the main work.

Notice what the course does not give you here. It pins no single age for hopping, cutting, or drawing a person. The honest limitation is that early-childhood motor skills vary widely, so this chapter describes them in words across the whole span of about 2 to 6.

Misconception check. Students often think there is an age by which every child "should" hop or cut with scissors, as in "4-year-olds can cut on a line". It is tempting, because one age is easier to remember than a range. The cure: every age in this course is a typical range, never a deadline. A child who is not yet doing something is a reason for a family to talk with a health professional if they are worried, never a conclusion you draw.

2. Use symbols: the preoperational stage

Watch a 3-year-old at a family kitchen table (an illustrative scene). The child picks up a wooden block, holds it to one ear, and says, "Hello? Grandma? Yes, I ate my lunch." The block is not a phone. For the child, right now, it stands for one.

That small act is the great gain of this period. Piaget called the stage the preoperational stage.

The preoperational stage is Piaget's second stage of cognitive development, placed at about 2 to 7, in which children use symbols and pretend play but show egocentrism, centration, and animism and do not yet conserve.
Symbolic thought is the ability to let one thing stand for another, such as a word for an object, a drawing for a house, or a block for a phone.
Pretend play is play in which a child acts as if one thing were another, such as feeding a doll or turning a box into a car.

The stage's name can make it sound like a list of failures. It is not. A child who can let a block be a phone has made a huge leap past the infant of Week 6.

Worked example — calling back the play time sample. In Week 8 you met Dataset C, an illustrative 10-minute time sample of one 4-year-old's play at a preschool. The observer coded 20 intervals of 30 seconds with Parten's categories.

Dataset C (illustrative): one 4-year-old's play in 20 intervals of 30 seconds, by Parten's category
Category	Intervals	Percent of 20
Unoccupied	1	5 percent
Solitary (independent)	3	15 percent
Onlooker	2	10 percent
Parallel	6	30 percent
Associative	5	25 percent
Cooperative	3	15 percent
Total	20	100 percent

Work three shares from it.

Play with other children: parallel 6 + associative 5 + cooperative 3 = 14 of 20 intervals. Then 14 ÷ 20 = 0.70, which is 70 percent.
Play that involved interacting with other children: associative 5 + cooperative 3 = 8 of 20 intervals. Then 8 ÷ 20 = 0.40, which is 40 percent.
Cooperative play alone: 3 of 20 intervals. Then 3 ÷ 20 = 0.15, which is 15 percent. Parallel play's 30 percent exceeds it by 30 − 15 = 15 percentage points.

In words: this child spent 70 percent of the sample playing with or beside other children, and 40 percent interacting with them directly.

Now the honesty note. Dataset C codes social participation, not pretend. A child can pretend alone, beside a friend, or in a shared game of "store", and the time sample would code those as solitary, parallel, or cooperative without saying whether anything was pretend. So the table cannot tell you how much of this child's play was symbolic. To count pretend play, you would need a different code, and that is a fair point to make in any report.

In practice (your tools). In a free spreadsheet, type the six categories in column A and the intervals in column B. In cell C2, type =B2/20*100 and fill it down to get each category's percent. In an empty cell, type =(B5+B6+B7)/20*100 to get the share of play with other children, and write the result out in words beside the table.

Misconception check. Students often think the preoperational stage means a child "can't think yet", because the name lists what is missing. The cure: the stage's great gain is symbolic thought, the root of pretend play, drawing, and language. The limits come next, and they sit beside real strengths.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Think of a game of pretend you remember from your own childhood or have seen a child play. What stood for what, and what does that show about symbolic thought?
(b) Dataset C cannot count pretend play. Describe one new code you could add to a time sample so it could, and say what it would still miss.

3. See from another place: egocentrism

Stand in front of a friend and hold up a picture so that it faces you. Ask a 3-year-old what your friend sees, and the child may name the picture, even though your friend sees only the blank back. The child is not being rude. The child is answering from the only place the child can stand.

Egocentrism, in Piaget's sense, is a young child's difficulty taking another person's point of view.

Piaget and Inhelder built a task to show it. In the three mountains task, a child sits in front of a table-top model of three mountains, each a little different. A doll is placed on another side of the model. The child is asked what the doll sees, often by choosing from pictures taken from different sides.

Worked example — reading the three mountains task (Dataset D). The task's two typical responses sit in one row.

Dataset D, three mountains task: the typical earlier and later responses
What the child is asked	Typical response earlier	Typical response later
Say what a doll sees from another side of a model	preoperational: picks their own view	concrete operational: picks the doll's view

Walk it in the course's order. What the child did: picked the picture of the child's own view. What it shows: egocentrism, in Piaget's sense. Which theory explains it: Piaget's cognitive-developmental theory, which places this response in the preoperational stage. What comes later: in the concrete operational stage, which Week 11 teaches, children typically pick the doll's view.

In words: picking your own view when asked what the doll sees is the preoperational response on the three mountains task, which Piaget read as egocentrism.

Misconception check — egocentrism versus selfishness. Students often think egocentrism means a child is selfish, because in everyday talk "egocentric" sounds like "self-centered". It is tempting, but the cure is in the task: the child in the three mountains task is not refusing to care about the doll. The child has trouble picturing a view from somewhere else. Egocentrism is a limit on seeing from another place, not a lack of caring.

There is a limitation worth naming. The three mountains task gives you a model reading, not a rule about every child. Piaget's stage ages are approximate, and a stage is a research model, not a timetable.

4. Spot the limits: centration, animism, conservation

Go back to the car and the moon. The child said the moon "wants to come home with us". Two more of Piaget's ideas live in that sentence and in a kitchen-table task.

Centration is focusing on one striking feature of a situation, such as the height of the water in a glass, and ignoring the others, such as its width.
Animism is giving life, thoughts, or feelings to things that are not alive, as when a child says the moon is following the car because it wants to come home.
Conservation is the understanding that an amount stays the same when its appearance changes, as long as nothing is added or taken away.

The moon sentence is animism: the child gives the moon a want. The moon does seem to keep pace with the car, because it is so far away, and the child centers on that striking fact.

Worked example — the conservation of liquid task (Dataset D). An adult shows a child two short, wide glasses with the same amount of water, and the child agrees they hold the same. Then, while the child watches, the adult pours one glass into a taller, thinner glass and asks whether the two glasses hold the same amount.

Dataset D, conservation of liquid task: the typical earlier and later responses
What the child is asked	Typical response earlier	Typical response later
Same amount after pouring into a taller, thinner glass?	preoperational: says the tall glass has more	concrete operational: says it is the same and explains why

Walk it in the course's order. What the child did: said the tall glass has more. What it shows: not yet conserving, because the child centers on the height of the water and ignores the narrower width. Which theory explains it: Piaget's preoperational stage. What comes later: in the concrete operational stage, children typically say it is the same and give a reason, and Week 11 teaches that reasoning.

In words: saying the tall glass has more is the preoperational response on the conservation of liquid task, and it shows centration on the water's height.

Misconception check. Students often think a child who fails a conservation task is not very bright, because the right reply seems so plain to an adult. The cure: failing a conservation task marks a stage of thinking, not low intelligence. In Piaget's model the change comes with development, not with drilling the right word.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Describe a time you saw a young child, or remember being a child, giving life or feelings to an object. Which of this section's terms fits, and why?
(b) An adult could "teach" a 4-year-old to say "same" in the conservation task by repeating it. Would that show conservation? Explain using centration.

5. Learn with others: the zone and scaffolding

Picture two children building a block tower on a living-room rug after dinner, while a parent sits nearby (an illustrative scene). The tower keeps falling at the fifth block. The parent says, "What if the big blocks go on the bottom?" The children try it, and the tower reaches seven blocks. Next round, the parent only points at the pile of big blocks. The round after that, the parent says nothing, and the children start with the big blocks on their own.

Vygotsky would say the children did more with help than they could alone, and that the help moved inside them. Three terms carry that idea.

The zone of proximal development is the gap between what a child can do alone and what the child can do with help from someone more skilled.
Private speech is talking to oneself out loud to guide a task.
Scaffolding is support that is adjusted to the learner and withdrawn as the learner's skill grows.

Get the credit right. The word "scaffolding" comes from Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976), "The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving", in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. It is usually linked to Vygotsky's ideas, because it fits the zone of proximal development so well, but it is not his own word.

Worked example — the block tower. Walk the scene in the course's order. What the children did: built a taller tower after a hint, then used the same plan with less help, then with none. What it shows: the tower of seven blocks sat inside the children's zone of proximal development, and the parent's support shrank from a full hint to a point to silence. Which theory explains it: Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, which says thinking grows through interaction with more skilled people. The name for the shrinking help: scaffolding, the term of Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976).

Worked example — reading record R5, part two. The running case (Dataset A) is illustrative, constructed for this course, and describes no real child. Record R5 was written at 4 years, in a preschool classroom.

Record R5 of the running case (illustrative), drawing: behavior and interpretation in separate columns
What the child did and said (behavior only)	What it might show (interpretation)
While drawing, says quietly, "Now the roof. Then the door."	private speech guiding the drawing; drawing as a fine motor skill

In words: the quiet "Now the roof. Then the door." is private speech, which Vygotsky's theory reads as the child guiding their own actions.

Misconception check — private speech. Students often think a child who talks to themselves is showing a problem, because adults usually keep their planning silent. The cure: private speech helps children guide their own actions, and it is common in early childhood. It is the child's own voice doing the job an adult's voice once did.

Misconception check — scaffolding. Students also often think scaffolding means doing the task for the child, or that Vygotsky coined the word. The cure: scaffolding is support that is withdrawn as skill grows, so a parent who builds the tower has not scaffolded anything. And the term belongs to Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976), usually linked to Vygotsky's ideas.

6. Understand other minds: false belief

Think of a time someone moved your keys while you were out. You walked back in and reached for the hook where you left them. You held a belief that was no longer true, and anyone watching could have predicted your reach. Understanding that other people act on beliefs, even wrong ones, is a big step in early childhood.

Theory of mind is the understanding that other people have beliefs, wants, and knowledge that can differ from your own and from reality.
A false-belief task tests theory of mind by asking where someone will look for an object that was moved while they were away.

The task comes from Wimmer and Perner (1983), "Beliefs about Beliefs", in Cognition. A puppet version was used by Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith (1985). In the puppet version, one puppet puts a ball away and leaves, the ball is moved while she is gone, and the child is asked where the puppet will look first. Most children pass false-belief tasks at around age 4.

Worked example — reading record R5, part one. The puppet game is the first half of the same record.

Record R5 of the running case (illustrative), puppet game: behavior and interpretation in separate columns
What the child did and said (behavior only)	What it might show (interpretation)
In a puppet game, says the first puppet will look for the ball "in the basket, where she left it", though the ball was moved	false belief understood, a sign of theory of mind

Walk it in the course's order. What the child did: predicted that the puppet would look where she left the ball, not where it is now. What it shows: false belief understood, because the child knows the puppet believes something that is no longer true. Which line of research explains it: theory of mind research, which began with the false-belief task of Wimmer and Perner (1983). What it fits: most children pass false-belief tasks at around age 4, and R5 was written at 4 years.

In words: saying the first puppet will look "in the basket, where she left it" shows false belief understood, which most children reach at around age 4.

Misconception check. Students often think the three mountains task and the false-belief task test the same thing, because both are about other people's points of view. The cure: the three mountains task asks what another person sees, and the false-belief task asks what another person believes. A child can show one kind of understanding before the other, so you name the task you are reading.

A caveat keeps this fair. "Around age 4" describes most children in the research, read as a group. It says nothing about whether any one real child is ahead or behind, and you never use it to judge a child.

7. Read with symbols: early literacy and two theories

Walk into a library story time on a rainy morning (an illustrative scene). A librarian reads a picture book aloud to a circle of children and their grown-ups. She stops before the last page and asks, "What do you think the bear will do?" She waits. One child points to the word "BEAR" in big letters on the cover. Another child, back at home later, scribbles a row of loops on paper and "reads" it to a stuffed rabbit.

Early literacy is the talk, stories, sounds, and early marks on paper that come before and support reading and writing, such as being read to, playing with rhymes, noticing print, and pretend writing.

Both theories see something in that story time. For Piaget, letters and words are symbols, so early literacy grows out of symbolic thought, the same gain that lets a block be a phone. For Vygotsky, the librarian's question and her pause are support inside the children's zone of proximal development, and the scribbled "reading" to a rabbit is a child taking over a practice adults once led.

Misconception check. Students often think Piaget and Vygotsky say the same thing, because both studied young children's thinking. The cure: Piaget's child builds knowledge mostly by acting on the world, while Vygotsky's child builds it with other people and the tools of a culture, such as language. The two theories often agree on what a child does and disagree on why.

Worked example — reading R5 with two theories. Put both halves of the record side by side and walk the course's order once more.

What the child did: in a puppet game, said the first puppet will look "in the basket, where she left it", though the ball was moved; while drawing, said quietly, "Now the roof. Then the door."
What it shows: false belief understood, a sign of theory of mind; private speech guiding a fine motor task.
Which theory explains it: Vygotsky's sociocultural theory. The quiet "Now the roof. Then the door." is private speech, a tool the child uses to guide the drawing, the same kind of guidance an adult once gave out loud.
What a second theory adds: Piaget's cognitive-developmental theory. The drawing of a house is symbolic thought, one thing standing for another, the great gain of the preoperational stage, which Piaget placed at about 2 to 7.

The reading in one plain sentence: saying the first puppet will look "in the basket, where she left it" shows false belief understood, which most children reach at around age 4, and the quiet "Now the roof. Then the door." while drawing is private speech, which Vygotsky's theory reads as the child guiding their own actions.

That sentence is the habit this course grades: name the behavior, name the concept, and say the evidence, in words a family could follow.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Which theory, Piaget's or Vygotsky's, better explains the library story time? Defend your choice with one detail from the scene.
(b) Describe one everyday moment from your own life, at work, at home, or in a class, when someone scaffolded your learning and then stepped back.

Key terms

Preoperational stage — Piaget's second stage of cognitive development, placed at about 2 to 7, in which children use symbols and pretend play but show egocentrism, centration, and animism and do not yet conserve. (first used: 2. Use symbols: the preoperational stage)
Symbolic thought — The ability to let one thing stand for another, such as a word for an object, a drawing for a house, or a block for a phone; it is the great gain of Piaget's preoperational stage. (first used: 2. Use symbols: the preoperational stage)
Pretend play — Play in which a child acts as if one thing were another, such as feeding a doll or turning a box into a car; it is symbolic thought in action. (first used: 2. Use symbols: the preoperational stage)
Egocentrism — In Piaget's sense, a young child's difficulty taking another person's point of view; it is a limit on seeing from another place, not selfishness. (first used: 3. See from another place: egocentrism)
Three mountains task — Piaget and Inhelder's task in which a child is shown a model of three mountains and asked what a doll sees from another side; the typical preoperational response is to pick the child's own view. (first used: 3. See from another place: egocentrism)
Centration — Focusing on one striking feature of a situation, such as the height of the water in a glass, and ignoring the others, such as its width. (first used: 4. Spot the limits: centration, animism, conservation)
Animism — Giving life, thoughts, or feelings to things that are not alive, as when a child says the moon is following the car because it wants to come home. (first used: 4. Spot the limits: centration, animism, conservation)
Conservation — The understanding that an amount stays the same when its appearance changes, as long as nothing is added or taken away. (first used: 4. Spot the limits: centration, animism, conservation)
Conservation of liquid task — A Piaget task in which water is poured from a short, wide glass into a taller, thinner glass and the child is asked whether the amount is the same; the typical preoperational response is that the tall glass has more. (first used: 4. Spot the limits: centration, animism, conservation)
Zone of proximal development — In Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, the gap between what a child can do alone and what the child can do with help from someone more skilled. (first used: 5. Learn with others: the zone and scaffolding)
Private speech — Talking to oneself out loud to guide a task, such as a child saying the next step while drawing; Vygotsky's theory reads it as a tool for guiding one's own actions. (first used: 5. Learn with others: the zone and scaffolding)
Scaffolding — Support that is adjusted to the learner and withdrawn as the learner's skill grows; the term comes from Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) and is usually linked to Vygotsky's ideas but is not his own word. (first used: 5. Learn with others: the zone and scaffolding)
Theory of mind — The understanding that other people have beliefs, wants, and knowledge that can differ from your own and from reality. (first used: 6. Understand other minds: false belief)
False-belief task — A task that tests theory of mind by asking where someone will look for an object that was moved while they were away; passing it means predicting the person will act on their old, now false belief. (first used: 6. Understand other minds: false belief)
Early literacy — The talk, stories, sounds, and early marks on paper that come before and support reading and writing, such as being read to, playing with rhymes, noticing print, and pretend writing. (first used: 7. Read with symbols: early literacy and two theories)

Summary

From about 2 to 6, gross motor skills grow into running, hopping, and climbing, and fine motor skills grow into drawing and using scissors; the course pins no single age for any of them.
Piaget's preoperational stage (about 2 to 7) gains symbolic thought, shown in pretend play.
In Dataset C, 14 of 20 intervals, 70 percent, were play with other children; the codes cannot count pretend.
Egocentrism is difficulty taking another's point of view, not selfishness; the three mountains task shows it.
Centration, animism, and not yet conserving are the stage's limits; failing conservation is not low intelligence.
Vygotsky's zone of proximal development is the gap between alone and with help; private speech guides a task.
Scaffolding is Wood, Bruner, and Ross's (1976) term for support withdrawn as skill grows.
Theory of mind is knowing others can hold false beliefs; most children pass false-belief tasks at around age 4.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

At an illustrative swim lesson, a 5-year-old kicks across the pool holding a foam board, then climbs out and zips up a jacket. Sort the three movements (kicking, climbing out, zipping) into gross motor or fine motor, and count each kind.
An illustrative observer at a community center codes a 3-year-old's play in 10 intervals: 2 solitary, 4 parallel, 3 associative, and 1 cooperative. What percent of the intervals were associative or cooperative?
A child at an illustrative grandparent's house sees two equal rows of 6 buttons. The grandparent spreads one row out, and the child says the long row has more buttons. Name the task family, the concept the child has not yet shown, and the feature the child is centering on.
A classmate writes, "Vygotsky invented scaffolding, which means showing the child how to do it and then doing it for them." Name the two errors and rewrite the sentence.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

Kicking across the pool and climbing out use the large muscles of the legs, arms, and trunk, so both are gross motor. Zipping a jacket uses the small muscles of the hands and fingers, so it is fine motor. That makes 2 gross motor and 1 fine motor, and 2 + 1 = 3 movements in all.
Add the two categories first: 3 + 1 = 4 intervals. Then divide by the total: 4 ÷ 10 = 0.40, which is 40 percent. The trap is dividing by 20 out of habit; this sample has 10 intervals, so the share is out of 10.
It is a conservation task, here with number instead of liquid. The child has not yet shown conservation, because the number of buttons stayed the same while only the row's length changed. The child is centering on the row's length and ignoring how far apart the buttons are, which is centration.
The first error is credit: the term "scaffolding" comes from Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) and is usually linked to Vygotsky's ideas, but it is not his own word. The second error is the meaning: scaffolding is support that is adjusted to the learner and withdrawn as skill grows, not doing the task for the child. A fixed sentence: "Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) named scaffolding: support that fits what the child can almost do and fades as the child takes over."

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, the quiz, and the discussion — and next week, the same preschoolers meet the parenting-styles model and Erikson's third stage.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com