Prior to completing this discussion read chapter 7 Piaget’s enduring contribution to developmental psychology and On major developments in preschoolers’ imagination. Using Piagets theory of cognitive development you will continue to build your Community Center Proposal by identifying an activity and a toy for one of the rooms in your center that promotes cognitive development. You can choose any of the five rooms for this discussion but the activity must be focused on the cognitive milestones of your chosen age group and must be clearly tied to Piagets theory. So your activity might be focused on object permanence for infants conservation transitivity or decentering for middle childhood or deductive reasoning for adolescence. Then think about what kinds of educational toys would promote cognitive development in this age group and again tie the selected object to a specific milestone. You must use at least one scholarly source in either your activity or your toy entry. Here are two examples providing you a model of how to approach this discussion and how to build the elements of the rooms in your Community Center.
EXAMPLE OF AN ACTIVITY:Cognitive Development Activity for Infant Room: Peek-a-boo. One of the activities we will incorporate into the infant room is Peek-a-boo. This is a game where the caregiver hides himself from the child (covering the child’s eyes or hiding behind a chair etc.) and then appears again by uncovering the child’s eyes or coming out from behind the chair. Another variation of this would be hiding a treasured object under a scarf and then revealing it again. One of the milestones of the first year of life is the development of object permanence. Object permanence occurs when an infant grasps that something (an object a person) still exists even when the infant cannot see it. This is a concept from Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and is one of the developmental tasks of the sensorimotor stage. Newborns do not have a sense of permanence. When they cannot see you you do not exist for them. During the first year of life they slowing learn that objects and people continue to exist even with they cannot be seen (Mossler 2014). Playing Peek-a-Boo is one way to foster the development of object permanence. Infants usually delight in seeing someone appear and then hide only to reappear. This activity will support the cognitive development domain and also the psychosocial domain because of its interactive nature.
Mossler R. (2nd ed.). (2014). Child and Adolescent Development. San Diego CA: Bridgepoint Education.
EXAMPLE OF A TOY OR OBJECT:Cognitive Development Object for Adolescent Room: Board Games involving strategy and problem solving. In the Adolescent Room we propose having a collection of board games that require logical thinking and problem solving. Adolescence is the beginning of more sophisticated thinking. Children in this age group move from concrete operations to what Piaget calls formal operations. They are becoming capable of deductive and hypothetical reasoning (Mossler 2014). Games like chess Battleship and checkers all require players to engage in this kind of thinking. Another game that can be used is the game of CLUE. This game supports the development of prepositional logic and requires players to think hypothetically (Neller Markov and Russell 2006). These games will not only promote cognitive development but will further support psychosocial development because of the required interactions.
Mossler R. (2nd ed.). (2014). Child and Adolescent Development. San Diego CA: Bridgepoint Education. Neller T. Markov Z. & Russell I. (2006). Clue deduction: Professor Plum teaches logic. Retrieved from http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~tneller/papers/flairs06.pdf