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How Children Learn (Early Learning and Teaching)

make children curious, with a desire to explore and experiment.The thought process
of children keep getting evolved as they grow. Children between three to six
years of age are at pre-operational stage of cognitive development. They think Notes
from their limited perspective and are slowly able to do logical and abstract
thinking. They learn through concrete and first-hand experiences. Play and activity
are key sources in their learning to build their power of reason and problem
solving..

Major areas that need attention for cognitive development are:

Sensory and perceptual development: Children learn through their senses. Use
of senses is basic to the process of knowing and understanding. Senses are the
gateway of knowledge. The more varied and extensive these experiences, the broader
will be the base for children to form ideas about the world. Any kind of sensory
deprivation or limitation may lead to development of incomplete or distorted
concepts. Greater attention needs to be on development of the five senses (seeing,
hearing, touch, smell, taste) through plenty of activities and opportunities.

Development of cognitive skills: These include memory and observation,
classification, sequential thinking, problem-solving and reasoning. The teacher
needs to develop and plan activities and experiences for all these cognitive skills.
Formation of basic concepts: Concept is a mental construction or picture of a
class of objects, people, places and phenomena. For example, if children have
developed a concept of colour, they will be able to classify or categorize objects
in the environment on the basis of this dimension. Formation or development of
basic concepts in children is crucial to their understanding of the environment.
Only if they have the clarity of these concepts will they be able to observe,
discriminate and categorize the different objects in their environment and progress
from perception-bound reasoning to logical reasoning. For development of any
concept, the activities are planned in the sequence like Matching (children match
at perceptual level), Identification (e.g. what is red? children include concept in
their passive vocabulary) and Naming (e.g. what colour is that?) where children
include concept in their active vocabulary).

Let us see the example of pre-number concepts:

Pre-number concepts: It is recommended that children master the following
pre-number concepts before proceeding with instruction to specific numbers:

Big, small, same as ( in size); long, short, same as ( in length); heavy, light, same
as ( in weight); tall, short, same as ( in height); fat/thick, thin, same as ( in
thickness);wide, narrow, same as ( in width); more, less, same as (concept of

EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION 71