Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development argues that children have four distinct stages of mental development. The objective of Piaget’s theory is not only to gain an understanding on how children acquire knowledge but also on knowing their intelligence at different stages which are classified by age. The stages are, the sensorimotor stage, from birth to 2 years, preoperational stage, 2 years to 7 years, concrete operational stage, 7 years to 11 years, and formal operational stage, ages 12 and above (Ahmad et al., 2016). The understanding of how children acquire knowledge and their level of intelligence based on the four stages play a significant role in choosing activities for each age/stage.
The child aged 3 years is in the preoperational stage which means that he/she is developing language, memory, and imagination. The intelligence in this stage is both intuitive and egocentric and they have symbolic thought (Ahmad et al., 2016). Therefore, an activity that involves imagination is most suitable for this stage. For example, painting of pictures, artwork, and drawing. The activities involve imagination and the child will utilize his/her imaginative skills to come up with something. For example, when a child is provided with a piece of paper and pencil, he/she will create drawings that depict what he/she finds to be most important about the objects they have viewed such as cow’s horns. They have no clear dimensions of the objects they have in mind and therefore they will draw a person who is taller than the house and omit some aspects. Blocks are important for the three-year-old child in building things that he/she imagines like houses. Pictures that are drawn but not painted would be significant for the child also as he/she will utilize his/her intelligence to paint it according to what he/she imagines.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The eight-year-old child is in the concrete operational stage according to Piaget’s classification. During this stage, the child is more methodological and logical in the manipulation of symbols. He/she is less egocentric and is more aware of the outside events and the world in general. Thet begin working things out in their heads which are known as operational thoughts. The best activity for the child is puzzles because he/she has the ability to think about the steps of a process in a certain order (Huitt & Hummel, 2003). They have the ability to focus on many parts of a problem and therefore it excites them when they have a problem to solve. The thoughts are generally operational. Puzzles will make them engaged and utilize their logical and methodological reasoning to solve the problems.
The child age 13 years is in the formal operational stage which according to Piaget is a stage whereby a child is able to reason about the tangible objects and events and also the abstract and hypothetical objects (Ahmad et al., 2016). Therefore, the most appropriate activity for the 13-year-old child should involve reasoning of not only the tangible things but also hypothetical objects. The hangman game is a suitable game for the 13-years-old child because it is hypothetical. The child should be provided with paper and pencil and together with other children. One child thinks of a word or phrase and the other children guess it suggesting letters a certain number of times. The game is appropriate because the children are able to utilize their ability to analyze the situations and come up with the most appropriate words that fit the situation. Another activity is to provide a scale whereby children are supposed to add weight until it balances. This requires the children to use their problem-solving abilities to complete the tasks. The children at this age are able to create a hypothesis that will enable them to know where to place the weights to balance the scale and then complete the task.
References
Ahmad, S., Ch, A. H., Batool, A., Sittar, K., & Malik, M. (2016). Play and Cognitive Development: Formal Operational Perspective of Piaget's Theory. Journal of Education and Practice , 7 (28), 72-79.
Huitt, W., & Hummel, J. (2003). Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Educational psychology interactive , 3 (2), 1-5.
