V

Cognitive Development

A

Understanding Stability and Change

Child recognizes and develops the ability to explain how material objects change and how they remain stable.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe

• Begins to understand death as a biological event
• Begins to understand how the body functions to sustain life

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Include non-fiction books about life cycles in the learning environment
• Include simple biological information in discussion of death (“Their heart has stopped beating. They are not coming back.”)

B

Representing

Child uses symbolic thought to represent.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe

• Adds details from a scene to its visual representation (e.g., the landscape or the weather)
• Differentiates fantasy from reality

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Observe and reflect on children’s dramatic play; consider what background knowledge they are drawing on
• Offer large pieces of materials to be used in different ways, as well as costumes that suggest a role: worker’s hats (hard hat, bus drivers’ hat), vest and suit jackets, dresses, a doctor’s kit
• Ask the child, “What story are you telling?” in their drawing or construction
• Write or help children write a story based on what they drew, acted out, or built

C

Memory and History

Child develops the ability to store, retrieve, and share information about past experiences.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe

• Retells an important life event in sequential order (e.g., draws a picture about something they did during summer vacation)
• Believes that they can remember much more than they really can
• Describes how memory works (e.g., says, “It’s easier to remember something that happened yesterday than something that happened last month.”)

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Support the child in making a timeline of their life
• Write a book, About my Life , with pages of stories about what happened when they were a baby, a toddler, and more recently
• Draw a picture of what life was like at a different time, such as before a sibling was born or before they moved

D

Investigating and Exploring

Child becomes a scientific thinker by manipulating objects, asking questions, making observations and predictions, and developing generalizations.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe

• Asks “how” things were made (e.g., “How does a pigeon build a nest?”)
• Generates ideas about how to find the answers to their questions (e.g., when wanting to learn more about trucks, the child decides to ask a family member who drives a truck)
• Lists materials needed for an experiment
• Records information from an experience (e.g., drawing, writing, storytelling, photographing)

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Model the use of scientific vocabulary
• Ask children to record observations of particular objects and outside scenes such as a cityscape, a tree, a garden
• View wrong answers or explanations as theories in development
• Ask for predictions about observable phenomena (“How do the apples get soft when we make apple sauce?”)
• Provide unique pictures, such as X-rays or close ups of butterfly wings and snowflakes

E

Understanding Cause and Effect

Child understands and explores the causes and effects of actions and events.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe

• Predicts an outcome based on previous effects they have observed (“If we leave the seeds on the top of the dirt, the birds will come eat them.”)
• Seeks but does not readily accept scientific causes for things

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Provide materials and opportunities to observe cause and effect
  • Blocks
  • Marble runs
  • Gears
  • Paints
  • Planting
  • Powders for mixing
• Ask children “what if” questions
  • What if we took the bottom block out first?
  • What if we add more water to the corn starch mixture?
  • What if we add more red to the purple color paint you mixed?

F

Engineering: Problem-solving with Materials

Child plans and uses hands, tools, and technology to solve problems with materials.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe

• Uses blocks to build stairs
• Sticks with a problem-solving strategy that has been successful before, without considering other alternatives
• Plans how to make a functional object from materials (e.g., a spinning top from Lego pieces)
• Replicates engineering solutions from life in play (e.g., creating a door with a latch for a cardboard house)

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Use fairytales to encourage building; for instance, read The Three Little Pigs , and ask groups of children to create houses that would withstand a wolf’s huffing and puffing
• Challenge children with prompts such as
  • Make something with a window in it
  • Make something that floats
• Ask the child about work they have done
  • “Tell me about your construction.”
  • “How do these parts work?”
  • “What is their function?”
  • “What’s another strategy that you could use?”

G

Math

1. Comparing and Categorizing

Child recognizes some similarities and differences between familiar and unfamiliar people, objects, or experiences.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe

• Sorts by a single attribute and reclassifies according to another attribute (e.g., sorts writing implements by type and then re-sorts them by color)
• Arranges 5–10 objects shortest to longest, biggest to smallest, or heaviest to lightest
• Compares number of objects by counting, even when one of the objects is bigger, up to 10

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Compare characters in a story or subjects in a non-fiction text
• Create class charts and surveys with student information such as siblings, caretakers, or ways of getting to school; use these to compare aspects of the class
• Compare classroom materials, sorting different sizes or shapes of blocks, for example, and discussing how to use them

2. Number Sense and Quantity

Child understands and explores numbers and quantity.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe

• Quickly names the number of objects in groups of five without counting
• Tells what number comes after any number between one and 20
• Explains that numbers tell “how many” of something
• Recognizes and writes numerals 1 through 10
• Divides up to 20 objects between four or five people by dealing out an object to each person
• Uses the words “first,” “second,” “third,” up to and including “tenth” (e.g., says, “I came in fourth” when describing a race with classmates
• Counts on their fingers
• Keeps track of objects that have and have not been counted (e.g., slides objects they have already counted to the side)
• Counts backward from 10 by taking away objects

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Provide bags of objects to count (10 acorns, 14 keys, 19 cubes) and ask children to count and draw the objects in them
• Allow children to freely play with math manipulatives before using them to solve problems
• S et up the dramatic play area as a store, and invite children to use number cards to “purchase” objects
• Analyze the mathematical thinking in children’s errors
• Provide games with dice and dominoes so that children can practice recognizing the number of items in a small set without counting
• Find math in the body, and play finger math; for example, hold up three fingers on one hand and ask children how many fingers are folded down

3. Patterning

Child develops the ability to identify, describe, extend, and create patterns.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe

• Creates and identifies simple repeating patterns (e.g., draws a pattern of hearts and stars around the edge of their picture)
• Creates and extends simple growing patterns (e.g., stacks one, then two, then three blocks to make a staircase)
• Explains growing patterns such as the pattern of “plus one” in addition (“If I add one, I get the next number.”)
• Describes a “jump, jump, clap” movement as two of something then one of something
• Pays attention to the linguistic patterns in the names of numbers, “Four, forty, and four hundred all sound like four!”

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Provide materials such as wooden cubes to build a staircase to model a “plus one” pattern
• Create ABC patterns together using clapping, tapping, and patting on the body; ask children to follow your pattern and then allow them to lead, with you following their pattern
• Sing songs with patterns, such as “Everyone Comes from a Different Place”

4. Spatial Sense and Geometry

Child understands how objects, points, lines, and shapes fit in space.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe

• Correctly uses position words such as “beside,” “under,” and “inside” to describe objects
• Slides, flips and turns pieces to make them fit in a puzzle, but does not always move them in the right direction at first
• Recognizes that there are other shapes that are not common (e.g., rhombus and hexagon)
• Spontaneously creates symmetrical buildings in the block area
• Builds complex bridges with multiple arches, ramps, and stairs at the ends
• Intentionally puts pattern block shapes together to make another shape for a picture

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Invite children to draw maps of routes, illustrating what landmarks will be passed or seen on different routes
• Draw maps of the playground and use them to go on a scavenger hunt
• Challenge the child to cover hexagon pattern blocks with other pattern blocks and see what works
• Introduce vocabulary such as “sides,” “angles,” and “parallel lines”
• Identify and describe the symmetry children spontaneously create in their art work
• Hunt for shapes outside and around the school; take photographs of them and print them out as shape books for the classroom