Features of cognitive activity of preschool children
Attention! The most important function in the formation of a child’s cognitive activity is perception.
All the fundamental principles for the further development of the human psyche are built on this basic feature. Thanks to this function, the preschooler is able to navigate the world around him. Perception develops in a playful way - put together a beautiful puzzle, make a multi-colored pyramid, arrange triangles into molds, and so on.
From one to three years
By selecting parts of figures by color, shape, size and other characteristics, combining and comparing them with each other, the child receives practical application of the acquired knowledge.
Naturally, a child cannot achieve an ideal result right away.
To some extent, due to fairly serious errors, the correct result is formed.
Approximately closer to two years, the number of actions performed decreases.
Now visual perception begins to play a role - the correctness/incorrectness of a particular movement is determined by eye.
At the same time, thinking also develops along with perception. A kind of logic appears. So, in order to get the ball from the table, you should move a chair towards it, stand on it, and then take the ball. While pouring flour into the seeder, he realizes that it is falling out through the holes.
Thanks to this, the child begins to open new horizons with great zeal.
Rolling, rolling and sliding - these skills are also formed in the process of active mobile activity.
Thus, upon reaching the age of three, the child is able not to waste extra time on experiments, but to turn it all over in his head, envisioning positive or negative versions of the action.
In addition to independently studying the world around him, the child learns information that interests him from adults. Why does the dog bark? It's a cat? Is your aunt smiling? Is sand falling? Etc.
Thus, based on interaction with the world and communication with others, the baby develops his cognitive function and receives information about life around him.
At the age of 3 – 5 years
The nature of the child’s cognitive activity becomes more pronounced:
- Knowledge about the world is obtained more fully.
- New means of orientation in the world have been identified.
Figurative thinking and the ability to understand various symbols appear. A phenomenon arises, in addition to perception, as sensation. Visual acuity improves, phonetic hearing increases. But at the same time, fantasy is not yet fully developed; the child is a realist. What I see exists. What I don’t see is not there. Curiosity begins to develop with greater force, the child asks more and more “why?”
By 5–6 years
Intelligence begins to develop, the ability to model and experiment appears. The preschooler begins to carry out experiments on his own.
Consultation “Features of the development of cognitive activity of preschool children”
Elena Kitayka
Consultation “Features of the development of cognitive activity of preschool children”
Features of the development of cognitive activity of preschool children
Throughout preschool age , along with play activities cognitive activity of great importance in the development of the child’s personality , in the process of socialization , which is understood as the process of acquiring knowledge, skills and abilities, and mainly as the search for knowledge, acquiring knowledge independently or tactfully adult guidance.
It has long been no secret that the world opens up to a child through the experience of his personal feelings, actions, and experiences. “The more a child has seen, heard and experienced, the more he knows and has assimilated, the more elements of reality he has in his experience, the more significant and productive, other things being equal, his creative and research activity ,” wrote the classic of Russian psychological science L. S. Vygotsky.
Cognitive activity requires identifying a number of features at different age stages of child development . First of all, this applies to early and preschool age , where important personal new formations arise, of particular importance: a change in the subject position at the age of three ( “I myself”
, arbitrariness of behavior in various types
of activities , orderliness of motives of behavior, formation of self-awareness (at 5.5-6 years)
.
These neoplasms manifest themselves and have a positive effect on the course of cognitive activity of preschool children , which has some similarities and differences compared to older children. In order to more clearly show the features of the cognitive activity of preschoolers , let's consider some of them:
- cognitive activity includes a mandatory increase in interest in learning; cognitive activity is manifested by children in conditions when they are interested, when an adult not only plays with them (which is also very important, but also communicates, organizes cognition , introduces children to the new, unknown;
- for children to demonstrate cognitive activity, it is necessary to create comfortable social conditions for them, to ensure positive relationships between all members of the children's team;
- at the highest levels of development of the cognitive activity of a preschool child, the manifestation of an individual, own style of behavior in the course of cognition ;
— cognitive activity presupposes the manifestation of independence, but in preschool age it is still characterized by the presence of communication with adults and peers in the process of cognition .
According to the testimony of O. M. Dyachenko, we note that already at the age of an infant there is a need to know the world around him , other people, and himself, which manifests itself in active movements, communication with adults, and later with children of the same age.
In the first year of life, the child has a need for active actions with objects, manipulating them, learning their basic properties and names through constant emotional communication with an adult (the child vocalizes, smiles, laughs, claps his hands, trying to attract the attention of an adult).
At the age of two, with mastery of gait, the range of elementary cognitive actions of the child : everything needs to be reached, picked up, touched, thrown or rolled, given “own”
Name.
At this time, active orienting-exploratory activity is observed , which is intense and such that it is stimulated by a cognitive motive (to find out “what is this?”
).
The older the child is, the greater the intensity of his cognitive activity . At two or three years old, the child begins to be interested in the causes and consequences of new phenomena. The new properties that it discovers in an object can contribute to the emergence of new types of activities , and, in particular, games. A child can play with a toy for quite a long time when he finds in it properties that evoke an emotionally positive attitude. In this case, a chain of indicative reactions appears that maintain the child’s activity (autostimulation)
.
At the age of 3-4 years, we can talk about the child’s cognitive interest , which is chaotic in nature, but at the same time is focused on acquiring knowledge about the world around him in order to introduce him to the world of adults - he strives to touch everything, taste it, shows great interest not only to toys, but also to things of adults, as speech develops , it becomes a “why”
, begins to ask adults a lot of questions about objects and phenomena that he encounters in life.
Curiosity, unlike cognitive interest , can be focused on anything; curiosity is superficial in nature, it is devoid of any significant meaning.
Curiosity is a static feeling that indicates that a person loves to learn something new. However, curiosity, again, unlike cognitive interest , has no meaning or purpose.
So, the child accumulates knowledge about the variety of objects and ways of operating with them . Until the end of preschool age , according to L.V. Artemova’s definition, the child’s actions acquire a certain direction and awareness.
Children of senior preschool age , we can consider the cognitive activity of preschool children as an activity that is formed and developed on the basis of cognitive needs in various types of activities , ensures the formation of a holistic view of the world around them, and is characterized by the existing cognitive orientation , initiative, independence of the child, interest and originality .
By the age of 6-7 years, cognitive interest is modified into cognitive activity . Cognitive activity is a dynamic, purposeful process of acquiring not all knowledge, but mainly that necessary for the implementation of some life plans.
At the end of preschool age, the necessary prerequisites are created for the child to move to a new level of development - to schooling.
Cognitive activity , guided by cognitive interests , lays the foundations of the child’s cognitive abilities , the development of which is a necessary condition for the formation of creative thinking. It should be noted that all of the listed features of cognitive activity in preschool age are at the level of formation and subsequently become the basis for the development of cognitive activity .
Working with preschool , V. S. Golitsyn also defines three levels of children’s cognitive activity , which gives children’s characteristics greater significance and depth:
- high - the child is always active, proactive in answers and communication, inquisitive, always attentive, follows directions, completes tasks correctly, shows a willingness to overcome difficulties, actively searches for solutions, easily communicates with adults and peers, knows how to resolve conflicts;
- average - the child responds only at the request of the teacher; listens to the adult’s explanations, but does not seek help himself, requires repetition, instructions and control over the progress of activities ; gets distracted, imitates others, completes tasks with additional stimulation; tries to overcome difficulties, but in case of failure retreats; in communication gives preference to familiar children, obeys the initiative of another, showing conformity;
- low - the child is passive, can work only with personal attention and constant assistance from an adult, is indifferent, does not start activities , does not work without a model, does not seek help at the slightest difficulty, but refuses to do activities ; joins joint activities by invitation , but does not know how to maintain relationships, often conflicts; The child's play is dominated by one-on-one games.
Despite certain levels of cognitive activity , we note that in some cases it is difficult to attribute a particular child to a certain level of cognitive activity . There is a need to introduce an intermediate level between the average and high levels of development of cognitive activity of preschoolers .
An analysis of the works of scientists devoted to the problem of children's play allows us to state that the cognitive activity of a preschool child is associated with the leading activity during this period and is manifested in the fact that it is in the game that the child independently organizes that he reproduces the activities of adults and comes into contact with others. children, carries out independent actions; and all this is aimed at understanding the world around us and reproducing acquired knowledge in active work ; in education, namely: in the process of preparing for schooling; in various classes in kindergarten, while listening to literary texts, labor, etc.; in the process of solving cognitive problems ; during excursions and studying seasonal natural phenomena; in the process of organizing elementary search activities and experimentation; in solving non-standard, problematic, advanced, creative tasks and intellectual games
So, the analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature on the formation of cognitive activity of preschool children proves that the formation of cognitive activity of a preschool child occurs , on the one hand, due to the child’s own experience in the process of everyday life. Along with this, the developmental features of a preschooler provide for the decisive place of an adult in the organization of the child’s entire life, including cognition . At the same time, the adult organizes the children’s activities using a variety of means.
Development of cognitive abilities, activity and interest
Important! In order to fully develop the child’s cognitive abilities, special classes should be conducted. The most interesting thing at this age is play. Therefore, all information should be carried out in game mode.
On average, such a game should take no more than 15–20 minutes, so as not to cause rejection in the baby. During classes, you need to show everything by example: in which hand to hold a spoon, how to take off and put on clothes.
Reference! Children love to have fairy tales reread to them or a story told again. This way the child remembers information better.
You should not make excessive demands or scold your child for misunderstanding or poor assimilation of knowledge. Remember, this can only discourage you from doing anything. This is the wrong strategy. It is better to praise the preschooler for small successes and help correct shortcomings.
Exercises
1. From one to three years:
They use cubes, various figures (not too small, a child can swallow them), assembling puzzles, fashioning elementary figures from plasticine and role-playing games (seller - buyer, hairdresser - client, and of course, daughters - mothers).
2. Three to four years:
Learning the alphabet and reading by syllables, learning basic mathematical calculations (a bear plus a bear, how many bears?), reading children's books, talking about them (why is the queen evil?), modeling animals and plants from plasticine, creating crafts, collecting Legos, construction sets.
3. From four to five years:
Games for comparison, difference (which mosaic is missing, which picture is extra). The ability to distinguish colors, coordinate nouns and adjectives, etc. develops.
Subject activity and cognitive abilities
At an early age, the child’s cognitive development takes place within the framework of objective activities. Subject activity at an early age determines, i.e. “leads” mental development, which is why it is called leading. It is in the course of objective activity that the most favorable conditions are created for the development of the most important abilities, skills and personal qualities of the child - speech, thinking, cognitive activity, focus and independence. Therefore, creating optimal conditions for the enrichment and development of various activities with objects is the first task of the educational process at an early age. In this area of development, several directions can be distinguished, each of which involves setting special pedagogical tasks and using appropriate methods for their implementation.
First of all, this is the development of culturally normalized, practical and instrumental actions. Teachers should help children learn how to properly use various household items (eating with a spoon and drinking from a cup, fastening buttons, combing their hair with a comb), toys specially created for mastering instrumental actions (spatula, hammer, net, etc.). This task is not limited to the development of individual hand movements, gross motor skills or specific skills. Mastering objective actions requires the child to overcome spontaneous, impulsive activity, and, consequently, to develop volition, perseverance and independence; the correct result obtained gives the child the opportunity to feel his skill, self-confidence, and feel involved in the affairs of adults. Thus, by teaching a child to eat, dress or wash properly, the teacher not only develops in him
self-service skills, but also develops personality.
To solve the assigned tasks, teachers must organize a developmental subject environment, establish joint activities with the child, and create conditions for the child’s independent activity with objects.
A special task facing the teacher within the framework of subject activity is mastering everyday skills and self-service skills. Children master many objective activities by becoming familiar with household objects while eating, going to the toilet, changing clothes, and also by taking part in the everyday activities of adults. Usually, kids willingly help the teacher set the table, put away toys, and care for plants and animals in the living area and area.
The baby masters instrumental actions not only in everyday life, but also in the process of individual and joint games and activities with an adult. To familiarize children with the objects of the surrounding world and master culturally normalized object-based actions, the group should contain a variety of household objects, toys that imitate them, and toys specifically designed for the development of a variety of object-based actions. A rich and varied subject environment stimulates the baby to various movements and actions, contributes to the enrichment of the child’s sensory experience and the development of thinking. Objects, toys and materials should be made available, if possible, sorted into sets and placed in such a way that children are encouraged to act with them. It is necessary to ensure that the group has a sufficient number and variety of toys to provide children with a free choice of activities in accordance with the interests and preferences of each child.
It is important that objects and toys can be used to develop various senses and develop a variety of skills. Therefore, it is necessary that, if possible, they be made of different materials (wood, plastic, metal, fabric, rubber, fur, etc.), have different sizes, textures, colors, sounds, and stimulate different types of actions.
Teachers support children's interest in toys and objects, providing the opportunity to independently explore them, and encourage children to play and do activities together. A child masters objective actions most effectively when they are included in a didactic or story-based game. For example, you can build a house for a hedgehog from cubes, build a train from modular furniture, and “bake” pies for dolls from sand.
Joint activities should not be forced on the child. The teacher responds to the child’s request for help, joins in his play, and helps
overcome difficulties. It can help the child correctly coordinate and distribute his actions. In this case, you should not perform actions for the baby; it is important that the child learns to identify the necessary properties of objects, for example, select and connect parts of a pyramid or nesting doll in the right order.
It is necessary to wisely combine the joint activities of the child with an adult and the independent activities of the baby. The teacher must offer the child activities that correspond to his skills, identify the “zone of proximal development” and create conditions for mastering more complex actions. When organizing joint activities, first of all, it is necessary to interest the child, support his desire to act with the object, without forcing him to accurately reproduce the pattern of actions. Young children do not yet know how to operate with objects together with their peers. Objects and actions with them completely absorb the interests of children; at the same time, they cannot focus on the actions of their partner, coordinate them with their own actions, or take into account other people’s desires. Therefore, there is no need to force children to collaborate with objects ahead of time - this can only cause unnecessary conflicts with peers. First, the child must himself examine the object that interests him, play with it as he sees fit. You cannot interrupt the child’s individual play with objects; on the contrary, we need to support it in every possible way and create conditions for it. When organizing group classes, the teacher must remember that each child should have his own toy in his hands. Children should be involved in joint object-based activities gradually, encouraging them to observe each other’s actions and join them. The teacher distributes actions between the children and helps them take turns.
The next task of educators within the framework of subject activities is the development of cognitive activity in children. Teachers create conditions for children to become familiar with the world around them, enrich children with impressions and
for children's experimentation.
Educators should support children's curiosity and encourage any manifestation of the child's interest in the environment. The cognitive activity of children should not be limited; the restriction should only apply to objects and actions that are dangerous to the life and health of the child.
Teachers organize joint observation of various natural phenomena with children. The purpose of these observations is to support or awaken children’s interest in the environment, to introduce them to the various properties of natural objects, to evoke surprise and the joy of discovering something new. Every
time of year, the teacher attracts the children's attention to changes in nature, draws their attention to a variety of natural sounds (birds singing, the sound of the wind, the rustling of leaves) and smells (flowers, leaves). During the walk, children can be introduced to the names of plants, watch birds, insects, and tell where they live and what they eat. Observation of various natural phenomena should be combined with interesting games and activities for children, during which they become familiar with the various properties of objects of living and inanimate nature through their own experience, and gain a general understanding of their distinctive features. For example, when collecting bouquets of fallen leaves, kids can compare them by size, color, and shape. Teachers support children's interest in adult activities. Children love to watch how the teacher feeds the fish or cares for the flowers.
a neighboring house is being built, etc. The teacher comments on his actions, tells what people are doing, and answers children’s questions.
In order to familiarize children with the environment, educators must read books to them, show them illustrations, educational filmstrips about the natural and social world. Their content should be interesting and understandable to children. Books, albums, postcards, photographs must be in the public domain. Children begin to show interest in the iconic side of human culture quite early. Looking at the books, the kids point their fingers at the letters and numbers and ask what they are. They may be interested in road signs, letters on a store sign, etc. Children’s curiosity should be supported and their questions answered. However, this does not mean that children should be specifically taught literacy and mathematics. It is enough to create an appropriate environment (place stands with magnetic alphabet, cards with letters, numbers, children's names, etc.) and maintain the interest of the kids. One of the important areas of a teacher’s work in developing children’s cognitive activity is organizing children’s experimentation. In the process of free research activity, the child receives new, sometimes unexpected information, establishes practical connections between his own actions and the phenomena of the surrounding world, and makes some kind of discoveries. Independent experimentation gives the child the opportunity to try out different methods of action, while removing the fear of making mistakes and the constraint of children’s thinking by ready-made schemes of action. In order to develop curiosity and stimulate children's investigative behavior, teachers create appropriate conditions. The group is equipped with a special “corner” for children’s experimentation: for playing with water, bulk, plastic materials, objects interesting for research and observation. By crumpling plasticine, tearing paper, feeling objects of different textures and densities, the child learns the various properties and qualities of objects and materials: hardness, softness, warmth, cold, heaviness, etc. By disassembling and assembling toys and household items, kids learn how they work. By moving balls through the maze, trying to open a box with a complex lock, the baby solves real mental problems. The teacher’s task is to support children’s cognitive activity and encourage them to experiment independently. An effective way to stimulate independent research activity is to present the child with special “mysterious” objects. These items must have the following properties. First, they must be new and vague. A high degree of uncertainty requires a wide variety of cognitive actions
child. In some cases, children’s research activities may not be
associated with solving a practical problem, have a “disinterested” character
(look at an unfamiliar object, touch it, taste it). In others
in cases it can be aimed at solving a specific problem
(for example, open a box to get a toy hidden in it). Secondly, such subjects must be quite complex for the child. The more complex and mysterious the toy is, the more varied parts it contains, the more likely it is that it will provoke various exploratory actions. At the same time, to develop a child’s research activity, an optimal level of complexity of the subject is necessary. If a subject is too simple or too complex, interest in it may quickly fade. This level is optimal
complexity, which requires some effort, but these efforts lead to
achieving an effect understandable to the child. Such items are special educational toys (for example, music boxes, a kaleidoscope, toys with various triggers, children's binoculars, a magnifying glass). The teacher can make a “toy with a secret” himself: put a small toy in a transparent box (for perfume, souvenirs, floppy disks) or in a case for glasses. Children are especially interested in household appliances, which offer rich opportunities for various manipulations (watch, voice recorder, transistor radio, camera, telephone, etc.).
A child’s research interest can be awakened by demonstrating bright, unusual effects, organizing experiments with a mirror, a magnet, an electric flashlight (let sunbeams appear, apply a magnet to toys made of various materials, illuminate various objects with a flashlight, etc.). Playing with water, paints, sand, and paper opens up a huge scope for children’s experimentation. These games are not only extremely exciting for children, but also very useful for establishing physical laws, mastering ideas about volume, shape, changes in substances, and for learning the properties and capabilities of a particular material. Kids will be happy to pour water from one vessel to another, check whether toys sink or float, and launch boats. Adults can help children diversify their games with water: color it with food coloring, make foam, blow soap bubbles. Children will be interested in kneading the dough (from flour, salt and water) and sculpting it into pies, figures, rolling out sausages, making pretzels, etc. You can invite the kids to pour beans and peas from a cup into a bowl, and spoon cereal into a cup. In the process of these activities, the child gains ideas about what “full”, “empty”, “many”, “little”, etc. are.
Games with visual materials are useful for developing children's cognitive activity. These games may not have visual purposes, but are purely exploratory in nature. Kids mix paints with interest, make strokes on paper with their fingers, a brush, or stamps, or scribble with a pencil, felt-tip pen, or chalk. At the same time, children not only get acquainted with the properties of various substances and materials, but also receive a quick visible effect from their own transformative actions, which causes them special joy.
Rich opportunities for children's cognitive development include musical toys (bells, tambourines, drums, metallophones, etc.) and a variety of sounding objects (rattles, wooden spoons, rustling paper). Experimenting with sound objects helps to develop children's interest in the world of sounds, the ability to differentiate sounds, the development of fine motor skills and articulation.
apparatus. The child’s research interest must be encouraged, together with him he must be surprised and rejoice at his discoveries, and praise him. You should not scold your child if, out of curiosity, he disassembles or accidentally breaks a toy, pours water on the floor, makes a mess, or gets dirty. It is imperative to answer all the child’s questions, trying to formulate answers in an accessible form, and ask the child about what he is doing, what he did. If the child does not show interest in research or his actions with the object are limited to simple manipulations, the teacher stimulates the child’s cognitive activity with questions, tips, and suggestions.
The most important direction of cognitive development at an early age is the improvement of all cognitive processes - perception, attention, memory and visual-effective thinking. During various
object-practical and instrumental actions, as well as in the process of observation and experimentation, develop all aspects of the child’s psyche, and above all cognitive development.
In addition, pedagogy has developed didactic techniques and toys specifically aimed at developing the perception, attention, thinking and memory of a young child.
Many children's toys are self-educational, or autodidactic. These are various composite toys that require matching the sizes or colors of different parts. Such toys include figured pyramids, nesting dolls, inserts, mosaics, and cut-out pictures. They
encourage the child to select and connect objects or their parts in accordance with their shape and size. So, to fold a pyramid, you need
take into account the ratio of rings in size. In the case of a figured pyramid,
you need to assemble a certain object (clown, mushroom, dog), correlating the component parts by shape. When assembling a nesting doll, you need to select halves
the same size and perform actions in a certain order - first
collect the smallest one, and then put it into the larger one, etc. When putting together a picture from parts, you need to select the parts so that it turns out
complete image of an object. The youngest children use trial and error in these activities. With the help of external indicative actions, the child sooner or later gets the desired result. This method of solving a practical problem is characteristic of visual and effective thinking. But already at an early age, children develop visual-figurative thinking, which allows the child to perform correlative actions in the mind and achieve the correct result without preliminary tests.
Games with cubes, geometric planar and three-dimensional shapes, children's lotto, and dominoes also contribute to the cognitive development of children.
The next pedagogical task of this direction of child development is the formation of focus and independence in objective activities.
It is known that the activity of a child under 2 years of age is procedural in nature: the baby receives pleasure from the process of action itself, their result does not yet have any independent meaning. By the age of three, the child already has a certain idea about the result of what he wants to do, and this idea begins to motivate the child’s actions. His activity becomes purposeful, the child persistently strives to obtain the right result. The idea of the correct result is formed both on the basis of a given sample (instructions from an adult, a picture, etc.) and one’s own plan. He no longer acts just like that, but with the goal of obtaining a certain result (“I want to build a garage”). Focus on results, perseverance and independence in achieving a goal are the most important characteristics not only of a child’s activities, but also of his personality as a whole.
To develop these valuable qualities, the help of an adult is necessary. A small child needs to be helped to “hold” the goal, to direct him to
achieving the desired result. To do this, you can use games with constructors and toys that involve obtaining a certain product. These can be shaped pyramids from which you need to assemble a certain object (a car, a soldier, a dog, etc.), all kinds of mosaics or puzzles from which pictures and cubes are made. Such types of children's activities as modeling, designing from natural and waste
material, making appliqués also contribute to the child’s formation of an idea of the result, the model that the work is aimed at achieving.
This idea is not formed immediately, and is fully accessible to children beyond the age of three, but in its elementary forms it is laid down in the third year of life. To help a child act purposefully, it is necessary to highlight in his mind the idea of the final result of the action. For example, a child wants to lay out a mosaic pattern based on a picture. The teacher examines the sample with him, asks what parts will be needed, and where they will need to be put. If
a child begins to sculpt something from plasticine, an adult asks what he
wants to blind. As the work progresses, the teacher encourages the child’s correct actions, draws his attention to mistakes, helps correct them, encourages
compare the result obtained with a sample or plan. At the end of the work, it is very important to praise the child and record the result of his work.
It should be borne in mind that a child’s plans at an early age are still very poorly supported by his real practical skills. He often strives for goals that he does not yet know how to realize, and failure causes a strong affective reaction. Without the help of an adult, it is difficult for a child to correctly coordinate and distribute his actions, make them goal-oriented, and determine their suitability for a given specific task. Adults have the responsibility to equip the child with the methods of action he needs, responding to his requests or offering him help on his own initiative. At the same time, the help of an adult should not dampen the child’s initiative and independence. The adult gives the child the opportunity to do everything he can independently.
Social and communicative development:
Development of cognitive and research activities
From five to seven years of age, the cognitive activity of a preschooler begins to include research and experimentation.
You can take standard games (hide and seek) or play a game - find the hidden thing in the room, focusing on the “cold - hot” clues.
You should play the following educational game: several children take turns trying to explain the meaning of a word without naming it, the child must guess.
At preschool age, children learn to draw conclusions and conclusions, conduct experiments, through trial and error. It is very good at this time to develop creative abilities, form moral and moral values by showing high-quality cartoons and reading good books.
It is also important to pay attention to the child’s speech development. Practice on your own if you see any benefit in it, but when your child does not pronounce a certain letter for a long time or makes severe articulation errors, contact a speech therapist.
Cognitive development in preschool age
Cognitive development of preschool children.
Childhood is an unforgettable, interesting time. It's time for searches, research, questions, experiments. It's time to ask why. This is what we call loving children who eagerly seek answers to the questions that torment them. The baby is a natural explorer of the world around him, and this world opens up to the child through his personal sensations, actions, experiences, through his, albeit still so small, but life experience.
Today, the development of cognitive abilities and activity of preschool children is one of the pressing problems of our time. It is very important to develop a child’s thinking, attention, speech, to awaken interest in the world around him, to develop the ability to make discoveries and be surprised by them.
Throughout preschool childhood, and especially in early and middle preschool age, along with play activities, cognitive activity, which involves an independent search for knowledge or under the tactful guidance of an adult in the process of cooperation, becomes of great importance for the development of the child.
Cognitive development involves the development of children's interests, curiosity and cognitive motivation; formation of cognitive actions, formation of consciousness; development of imagination and creative activity; the formation of primary ideas about oneself, other people, objects of the surrounding world, about the properties and relationships of objects of the surrounding world (shape, color, size, material, sound, rhythm, tempo, quantity, number, part and whole, space and time, movement and rest , causes and consequences, etc.), about the small homeland and Fatherland, ideas about the socio-cultural values of our people, about domestic traditions and holidays, about planet Earth as the common home of people, about the peculiarities of its nature, the diversity of countries and peoples of the world.
One of the main principles of preschool education is the formation of cognitive interests and cognitive actions of the child in various types of activities. This understanding of the cognitive development of preschool children suggests viewing it as a process of gradual transition from one stage of development of cognitive activity to another.
We will include the following stages of cognitive development: curiosity, inquisitiveness, development of cognitive interest, development of cognitive activity.
Let's look at each stage in more detail.
1. We consider curiosity to be the first stage. It is characterized by a selective attitude towards any subject, conditioned by purely external aspects and circumstances that are often suddenly revealed to the child. At this stage, the preschooler is content with only the initial orientation associated with the interestingness of the subject itself; entertainment as a factor in the discovery of cognitive interest usually serves as its initial impetus. As an example of the manifestation of curiosity in a preschooler, we can cite the fact that at 2–3 years old a child focuses on the brightness of an object, without paying much attention to its essence.
2. The second stage of cognitive development of preschool children
we defined as curiosity, which is
valuable state of the individual, a more active vision of the world, characterized by
the child’s desire to penetrate beyond the boundaries of what was initially seen and perceived. At this stage of interest, as a rule,
strong emotions of surprise, joy of learning, delight, satisfaction with the activity. The essence of curiosity lies in the formation and deciphering of various kinds of riddles.
3. A new quality, or stage, of the cognitive development of preschoolers is cognitive interest, characterized by increased
stability, clear selective focus on the cognizable
met, a valuable motivation in which cognitive motives occupy the main place. Cognitive interest facilitates the preschooler’s penetration into essential relationships, connections, and patterns of mastering reality. A manifestation of cognitive interest should be considered the child’s desire to independently answer questions posed, for example, during experimentation or exploration of the world around him.
4. We consider cognitive activity, the basis of which is
a holistic act of cognitive activity – educational and cognitive
task.
As our recommended activities that ensure children’s cognitive development
preschool age, we highlight:
– organization of solving cognitive problems;
– the use of experimentation in the work of preschool educational institutions;
– use of design.
Experimentation is considered a relevant method for the cognitive development of preschool children. It is considered as a practical activity of a search nature aimed at cognition
properties, qualities of objects and materials, connections and dependencies of phenomena.
In experimentation, a preschooler takes, without meaning to, the role of a researcher who independently and actively explores the world around him, using various forms of influence on it. In the process of experimentation, the child masters the position of the subject of cognition and activity.
When working with preschoolers, cognitive tasks are used, which are understood as educational tasks that presuppose the presence of search knowledge, methods (skills) and stimulation of the active use of connections, relationships, and evidence in learning. A system of cognitive tasks accompanies the entire learning process, which consists of sequential activities that gradually become more complex in content and methods.
After the children accept the cognitive task, under the guidance of the teacher, it is analyzed: identifying the known and the unknown. As a result of the analysis, children make assumptions that may be
right and wrong, often contradictory. The teacher must listen and take into account all assumptions and pay attention to their inconsistency. If children do not come up with any ideas, they may
nominated by the teacher himself.
Effective methods of cognitive development of preschool children include project activities that ensure the development of children’s cognitive interests and the ability to independently construct their own
knowledge and navigation in the information space, development of critical thinking.
In preschool age, two categories of knowledge clearly manifest themselves:
- knowledge and skills that a child acquires without special training in everyday communication with adults, in games, observations, while watching television programs;
- knowledge and skills that can be acquired only in the process of special training in the classroom (mathematical knowledge, grammatical phenomena, generalized methods of construction, etc.).
The knowledge system includes two zones - a zone of stable, stable, verifiable knowledge and a zone of guesses, hypotheses, and half-knowledge.
Children's questions are an indicator of the development of their thinking. Questions about the purpose of objects, asked in order to obtain help or approval, are supplemented by questions about the causes of phenomena and their consequences. Questions appear aimed at gaining knowledge.
As a result of assimilation of systematized knowledge, children develop generalized methods of mental work and means of constructing their own cognitive activity, develop dialectical thinking, and the ability to predict future changes.
All this is one of the most important foundations of a preschool child’s competence and his readiness for productive interaction with new learning content.
Any normal child is born with an innate cognitive orientation that helps him adapt to new conditions of his life. Gradually, cognitive orientation develops into cognitive activity - a state of internal readiness for cognitive activity, manifested in children in search actions aimed at obtaining new impressions about the world around them. As the child grows and develops, his cognitive activity increasingly begins to gravitate towards cognitive activity. Developed cognitive activity is characteristic of adults.
During preschool childhood, thanks to the child’s cognitive activity, the emergence of a primary image of the world occurs. The image of the world is formed in the process of development of the cognitive sphere, which consists of three components: 1. cognitive processes (perception, attention, memory, imagination, thinking); 2. information (experience and achievements accumulated by humanity on the path of understanding the world); 3. attitude towards the world (emotional reaction to individual objects, objects, phenomena and events of our world).
All components of the cognitive sphere are closely interconnected. The cognitive development of preschool children involves the work of teachers with all three components of the cognitive sphere. However, it should be remembered that the process of cognition of a small person differs from the process of cognition of an adult. Adults understand the world with their minds, and small children with their emotions. For adults, information is primary, and attitude is secondary. But with children it’s the other way around: attitude is primary, information is secondary.
When starting to plan the cognitive development of children, we must remember the age characteristics of children, and in the process of work, the characteristic patterns of cognitive development of children.
