Piaget for Preschoolers

Piaget for preschooler may shed some light in understanding your preschooler's mind, why he makes such a big deal with nothing. Here is one;

Rishi becomes very upset when his teacher calls him by Raj. He refuses to respond to her, even when he knows that it is him the teacher is calling. The teacher finds him defiant. Conference with mom does not smooth the situation or understanding this preschooler's attitude. Other older members of the family all agree that Rishi should change his attitude.

According to Rishi, he is not Raj, he does not want to become Raj. He does not want to change into Raj.

I interviewed ten ten preschoolers separately, aged 3- 5 . When asked “Does the person change if the name is changed ?”

Nine out of ten replied “Yes”. One unsure.

“If I call this pencil -kalom or crayon will it change?”

Five replied “Yes”.

Two bilingual children were unsure but they agreed that with things it may be different, or when you are using a different language it is different, but with the person's names- definitely the person will change.

I gave them a clue. What about nick name? -" William, when you are called Bill -do you change?"

His reasoning is- "That name is already given."

Older children over seven years of age all disagreed that the teacher's mistake can be forgiven. The person really does not have any danger to be changed.

Two out of five (5-6) years of age were unsure.

According to preschoolers the name resides in the object or in the person. It comes with the whole packet.

Piaget explains this in his theory of Nominal Realism. You'll find it in this book if you want to go deeper.

According to Swiss psychologist and educator Jean Piaget,

preschoolers understand the world as it appears to them. Perception is the key word at this stage, not logic. In his theory he divided the human cognitive maturity into four main stages even though each individual matures according to his own pace, and may not match with this exact chronology, this is a general guide line.

Infants up to 2 years of age are in the sensori- motor stage, when they try to grasp the world with their senses and motors. The infant may put everything in her mouth - taste is an important sense, isn't it?

The next stage (2-7 years of age) is the pre- operative stage when the child understands the world the way it appears to him. Remember our experiment with the beads?

The same number of beads scattered into a long line and gathered together in a short line will be different no matter how many times you count.

To a preschooler the world revolves around him. He is incapable of understanding others' point of views. He is egoist.

The child soon matures to the next concrete operationalstage (7-16 years of age) when he tries to understand the world with concrete things, with hands-on experiments.

The final stage is the formal operational stage when he can grasp the abstract aspects of this world. He uses logic and calculate the world analytically.

There may be transitional stages when the individual goes back and forth from one stage to another. For example, in some aspects he may be matured to be in the concrete stage, or he can take some logic, yet in other aspects, perception plays the key role. According to Piaget, many adults never reach the formal stage.

As parents and teachers our obligation is to understand the child from his developmental stage and patiently provide him with the appropriate tools, concrete hands-on experiences so that his cognitive development is also nourished.

It is important that you give the pre -operational child concrete things to handle - beads to count, sand to mess with, water and colors to paint, instead of lectures .

She has go through the concrete stage first before landing in the the logical, abstract formal stage. Unless you involve her in solving a problem, reasoning may not work.

You need to let her play with other pre-opearational children so that she can learn to share and make friendships, learn in her own way, taking baby steps to understand others' feelings.

After Piaget for Preschooler please try Montessori Bead Math

or the Bead stairs

or go to the Home Page for more options.