Cognitive Development Observation

Cognitive Development

Preschool children ages 3 - 5:

Cognitive development refers to the acquisition and use of thinking skills. It a child's

increasing ability to think and reason, they are active participants in the learning process,

they are learning how to learn. Like scientists preschool children are curious about what

they observe, they ask questions, make predictions about what will happen and test their

ideas, they recall past experiences and apply what they know to new situations in order to

understand them. They are interested in cause and effect, sometimes they make

connections between what they have observed and what they have experienced even

though the ideas put together are not related. " today we are having fish for lunch

because the teacher is late. Whenever the teacher is late we have fish". According to

Jean Piaget, children this age are in what he called, preoperational stage and are

egocentric. It doesn't mean they're self fish or focused only on themselves, they believe

that everyone sees the world the way that they do, leaving no room for the perspectives of

others. For example, a child will sometimes cover their eyes so that they cannot see

someone and make the assumption that the other person now cannot see them either.

They believe your thoughts are just like theirs. Cognitive skills also include

mathematical thinking. For example, preschool children can sort objects and explain how

they classified them : "these are all red and the other pile is blue" Mathematics is a way

of thinking about and organizing information. It involves finding order, quantifying,

comparing objects recognizing patterns, seeing relationships, making predictions and

solving problems. It uses special language: more, less, equal the same and so on. One

might hear preschoolers often say things such as, "he has more cars than I do", I can run faster than you", "we have...

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