INTRODUCTION

Jean Piaget looked at the concept of cognitive development from a biological angle. To him, adaptation and organization are the key principles in the human’s intellect and growth. He argued that human beings always strive to have a state of balance in their mind. Adaptation comes about when the child experiences cognitive disability, that is, the situation what the child sees the world as expected and what she or he is undergoing. The child therefore buys new information and integrates with the already existing one. Piaget calls this accommodation. This comes about when the acquired new information doesn’t fit well into the already existing structures. For instance, a child coming across a squirrel for the first time and discovers that it differs with the rabbit. He/she therefore come up with another representation of a squirrel. The mind has to have some form of information organization hence scheme is the basic structure.

In a child’s development, play is an important aspect to consider. This is because ideas and concepts are learned and also, there is an enhancement of language, motor skills and social life through play.

To Piaget, there are four major stages that are involved in cognitive development. Firstly, we have sensorimotor period that occurs between Zero to two years. At this stage, the child as he interacts with the environment creates sets of concepts and the operations of the reality. There is an engagement in motor movements starting with early reflexes and proceeding towards intentional actions. In most cases, these actions are trial and error. It’s through their actions that children learn that their behaviors have effects on the environment. Their actions become sophisticated as they develop hence becoming deliberate. For example, a child grasps a rattle paper in place in his hand, this can be compared to the older child who picks up and shakes a rattle to make noise.

The pretend stage in most cases starts at the age of eight months. At this level, the child can act out actions and roles of an adult and some familiar events. At three or four, the skills become symbolic; the child can substitute objects for instance, a child’ feeds ‘a doll using a toy bottle. On the other hand, the older child feeds the baby using a wooden block in pretence that the block acts as the baby bottle. This level provides a good foundation for the child play as the child gets his/her own experience.

Preoperational period is the second stage and it occurs between the ages of two to seven years. The child can not still abstractly conceptualize. He needs touchable situations. At the age of around three or four, constructive play interests the child. Here he or she can manipulate materials and objects in their different worlds and come up with an end product such as sand houses, clay cows sand mountains and so on. As he develops skills in manipulation of materials and objects, they sharpen his skills in thought expressions, ideas and concepts.

At the mastery play level, there is the demonstration of the skilled Moto movements and there is full engagement in forms of imagination or pretend play at the same time. Children easily move about with their environment and are more confident in their actions. There is running and jumping over obstacles on a playground as they pretend to be the cartoon superhero’s. This occurs at around four to five years as encounter new play challenges and experiences. At the age of five, they develop interest in games that have two or more sides and have rules; this is because the thinking is becoming more logical. At this level, they begin to realize activities like Red Rover, Peter Says, and rule games won’t not work unless it is followed by everyone. This level involves competition and definition of criteria that establish winners.

The third stage is the concrete operation that which occurs between the ages of seven years to eleven years. As the physical experience goes up, he starts conceptualizing, logically creating structures that explain the physical experience around him. At this point, he can now solve abstract problems for instance; equations on arithmetic can be solved not only with objects but with numbers.

The last stage is the formal operations that occur between the ages of eleven to fifteen years. The cognitive structure at this point has developed and is like that of an adult. He is able to conceptualize and reason. At all developmental stages, there is an interaction of the child with his environment using the so far constructed mental maps. The experience fits easily if it’s the repeated one into the cognitive structure so that the state of equilibrium is maintained. He looses equilibrium if the experience is new or different. He therefore adjusts his cognitive structure in a way to accommodate the new conditions.

However, different scholars also have done researches on role of play in child development. This was perhaps the development of Piaget, s theory of learning. Mc Cune &Zanes, 2001argued that infants and toddlers do involve themselves in activities that in most cases stimulate their senses and lead to the development of the motor skills. These children actively explore their capabilities by using simple non directional and repetetitios plays. To them, as infants play on their own and alone, the toddlers play with