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.

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe

• May be anxious about death
• Discusses the physical changes that accompany age
• Can imagine their adult family members growing old
• Compares the life cycles of different organisms (e.g., says that people live longer than dogs)
• Becomes conscious of time, but is not yet able to tell time on the clock (“Is it three o’clock? My grandma is coming to get me.”)

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Include books in the learning environment that help children understand death
  • And So It Goes , by Paloma Valdivia
  • Goodbye Mog , by Judith Kerr
  • The Goodbye Book , by Todd Parr
  • Ida Always , by Caron Levis and Charles Santoso;
  • The Dead Bird , by Margaret Wise Brown
• Read non-fiction books about the life cycles of familiar animals (such as cats, dogs, and other animals that children see in their communities); explore rituals and routines for having pets and for pet deaths

B

Representing

Child uses symbolic thought to represent.

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe

• Assigns roles and acts out scenes from the economy (e.g., child dramatizes a farmer’s market and has peers work at different stalls and be customers)
• Uses art to reflect on their experiences (e.g., uses musical instruments to make a song about an experience they had)
• Shares stories and symbols from their own families and cultures

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Ask families about cultural or religious prohibitions to representation; create a welcoming and inclusive learning environment
• Invite children to use collage materials to make dollhouses out of cardboard boxes and make characters to inhabit the dollhouses
• Sing songs with space for children’s contributions and allow them to write new verses
• Create visual art while listening to different types of music

C

Memory and History

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

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe

• Begins to understand that history describes the collective memories of people and events from other times and places
• Asks questions of elders about how life was different in the past
• Shares significant events from their own family history with peers

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Include books in the learning environment that tell stories from history
  • Histories of the children’s national and cultural groups (e.g., history of Taíno people)
  • Biographies (e.g., Obama, Lincoln)
  • Stories of historical events (e.g., The March on Washington)
  • Descriptions of life at different periods of history (e.g., prehistoric man)
  • Invite elders to the classroom to talk about their memories

D

Investigating and Exploring

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

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe

• Uses non-fiction books to find answers to questions
• Develops hypotheses (e.g., If a hermit crab prefers a particular shell, the child says, “I think it’s because he has more room to grow in there.”)
• Describes a strategy for finding out if their hypothesis is true
• Uses prior knowledge to make generalizations about what might happen (e.g., The child says, “Fruits grow on trees, so I think if I plant this orange seed, a tree will grow.”)

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Use photography to gather observations over time; for example, observe a tree through several seasons or watch a pumpkin over the weeks around harvest, and ask children to come up with theories about why changes occur
• Ask children to do research by looking in books for answers to their questions
• Question the child’s reasoning to explore their thought process, but without concern for correctness (“What makes you think that? How did you figure that out?”)

E

Understanding Cause and Effect

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

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe

• Believes their own theory about the cause of an event, regardless of the evidence
• Discusses how rules impact people and the environment (e.g., recycling)
• Reflects on how some actions can help others feel better (e.g., cheering up a sad friend by sharing their snack)

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Ask children why the water in a clear or open container left on the heater or windowsill diminishes over a few days
• Plant beans in a plastic bag lined with a wet paper towel; ask why some grow and some do not

F

Engineering: Problem-solving with Materials

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

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe

• Investigates the motion and movement of objects when solving problems with materials (e.g., notices and compares how different balls bounce higher than others)
• Identifies and describes tools made for different purposes
• Uses sophisticated strategies to make their block buildings more stable

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Include tools in the learning environment that children can access for a variety of purposes
  • scissors
  • staplers
  • hole punches
  • hammers
  • measuring tapes
  • hand drills
• Invite children to systematically test the stability of their block buildings by rolling balls at them
• Offer encouragement and guidance (“These problems can be solved! You can figure this out. What if you…?”)

G

Math

1. Comparing and Categorizing

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

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe

• Compares several aspects of something (e.g., compares animals, identifying similarities and differences between the ways they move, eat, and defend themselves)
• Notices and compares changes over time (e.g., compares the length of the day at different times of the year, saying, “It used to be dark when I was picked up.”)
• U ses a repeating unit to measure length (e.g., uses a line of small blocks to measure a book)
• Identifies similarities and differences among the lives of people in different families and communities

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Offer objects for comparison and categorization
  • Photos of animals
  • Collections of rocks or leaves
  • Keys
  • Buttons
• Engage children in using categorization for social good; for example, categorize recycling materials
• Provide unit blocks and rulers for measurement
• Create activities to measure distance (e.g., hold a paper airplane contest, then chart the results in a graph)

2. Number Sense and Quantity

Child understands and explores numbers and quantity.

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe

• Understands that 10 is always 10, whether it is made by adding 6+4 or 7+3
• Starts counting with numbers other than one (e.g., asked to count from four to seven, counts four, five, six, seven)
• Answers questions about quantity such as, “How many more?” “How many fewer?” by counting up or down (e.g., when asked how many is three more than six? The child responds, “Six, seven [puts up a finger], eight [puts up another finger], nine [puts up a third finger])
• Understands place value; understands value of a digit according to the place of the digit within a number
• Makes whole objects from parts when counting (Given three whole plastic eggs and four plastic egg halves, knows they have five whole eggs)

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Create a number line adding one number each day for the whole year, and use it to practice counting by ones, twos, fives, and tens
• Offer structures like a 100’s chart or number line sections for organizing number systems
• Play games in which children roll a dice or spin a spinner and move a piece along a path
• Provide strong context for solving problems with numbers (With 23 children in the class, does everyone have a snack if you have 18 snacks? How many more we need or how many extra do we have?)

3. Patterning

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

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe

• Identifies the smallest unit of a pattern
• Skip counts by tens, fives, and twos
• Explains the rule for a number pattern. For example, 5, 10, 15, 20 is the “plus five” number pattern
• Looks for and explains patterns in a number chart
• Understands the commutative principle of addition (2+3 = 5, 3+2 = 5)

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Continue to notice patterns in the world on numbered streets and avenues or windows on buildings
• Model addition with materials to ground math ideas in concrete experience; use two colors of tiles to show the commutative property of addition (two green and three red is five tiles; three green and two red is still five tiles)
• Invite children to make patterns while stringing with small beads or weaving

4. Spatial Sense and Geometry

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

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe

• Uses maps with picture clues to determine paths and find objects
• Discriminates and names most common shapes, including rhombuses, without making mistakes such as calling ovals circles
• Moves one shape on top of another to check if it fits exactly
• Divides circles and rectangles into halves or fourths to develop understanding of part/whole
• Uses blocks to make complex towers or other structures involving multiple levels with ceilings

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Look at maps with children and encourages them to describe
  • Direction—which way?
  • Distance—how far?
  • Location—where?
  • Identification—what objects?
  • Coordinates—what are they?
• Encourage children to make representations out of pattern blocks (for example, a ship with a smoke stack and rhombus-shaped smoke); they may trace their pattern block images to create pattern block puzzles for one another
• Read books by Rebecca Emberly and others that show how to represent objects with different shapes