!!! 10 points!!! HELP?

Question

I have to imagine i am a guestspeaker at a preschool parent teacher night i need to know information about cognitive development in children. what information i would share with the parents and the teacher. Help please

Answer 1

Look up Jean Piaget's theory of Cognitive Development.  He listed 4 stages of development for children:

Sensorimotor stage (birth - 2 years old)

Preoperational stage (ages 2-7)

Concrete operations (ages 7-11)

Formal operations (beginning at ages 11-15)

For preschoolers, you would be concerned with the pre-operational stage.  At this stage, children are concrete thinkers.  They need to see, feel, taste, experience things to learn.  They don't have the ability to think abstractly yet.  

2 good websites are:

http://www.funderstanding.com/piaget.cfm

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/deve...

Answer 2

The area of "Cognitive development in children" is pretty broad- My first advice would be to decide which "avenue" you really want to take: For example some ideas you could use would be:

- Cognitive Growth from birth- preschool

- Cognitive Growth on a specific age group (Infants, toddlers, preschoolers, school-age)

- Cognitive Growth in regards to learning skills (how they learn)

- Cognitive Growth and Assessment

Next, I would say that you really need to put yourself in that positiion as though you were a guest speaker- Come up with a general outline of the types of things you want to share.  Design hand-outs you could give the parents and staff or even a powerpoint presentation you could use!  

SPECIFICS: Using one of the options I listed above- (Cognitive Growth in regards to learning skills -how preschoolers learn)- I would come up with specific TOPICS I knew I wanted to share such as:

- Facts about Preschooler's Cognitive Growth (rate of growth, brain patterns, developmental rates, etc.)

- Play as an important part of learning

- Learning through discovery and using the 5 senses

- Learning Centers

- Ideas you can use at home to help in your child's cognitive growth

I would find information on the topics by searching for articles and books on the subject.  Soem GREAT resources to start with are "Developmentally Appropriate Practices" By: Bredekamp and Copple, The NAEYC website, the NNCC website...

Also, I have my own website that has information for teachers and parents with some great website listings, ideas and information about preschoolers!  

It's http://www.gems-for-the-teacher.com!  Feel free to use the ideas there, just please give credit to the site!

Answer 3

Do some research on different development theories - Piaget is a good one. Get on wikipedia. Piaget should have links to other developmentalists.

Answer 4

You would have to know how you can help the children interact with the teachers and the other kids. If you were going to be a part of preschoolers' lives, you would have to convince them that you would be a positive influence and that the preschool would be a healthy environment for young children.

Answer 5

you can't miss if you quote Jean Piaget. Just do some reseacrh on him and see what he says about cognitive development.

You ultimately want to share with the parents the different stages of cognitive development sensory, pre-operational ets. and then talk about the general traits of children at each stage.

It's not a bad topic....there's an abundance of info out there on the topic.

Good luck!!!!!!