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.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Create opportunities for children to explore stability and change in local contexts
  • Visit a local watershed to study water quality
  • Look at photos of the local area in years past in comparison to today
• Ask about characters in chapter books (“How do they change over the course of the story? Why do they change? What is the same about them throughout?”)

B

Representing

Child uses symbolic thought to represent.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Notice the particular forms of representation that are motivating for different children
• Encourage children to use art to represent their feelings
• Invite families to join children in creating
• Welcome families to celebrate children’s creations
• Challenge children to create models of villages, replicating complicated architectural details

C

Memory and History

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Use self-talk to describe strategies for organizing information to make it easier to retrieve
• Ask children to write from perspectives of figures they have read and learned about (What was it like to be a knight’s horse, for example?)
• Welcome children to link their family histories to larger discussions of historical events

D

Investigating and Exploring

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Invite families to share areas of expertise with the class
• Support children in generating questions for research
• Provide graphic organizers so that children are able to successfully complete a multiday investigation
• Create role models for children
  • Visit scientists at work
  • Read about scientists who changed history
  • Ensure representation of women and members of non-dominant racial, linguistic, and cultural groups

E

Understanding Cause and Effect

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Create opportunities for children to see how changing certain factors causes a predictable change in outcome
• Teach children about climate change and engage the class in analyzing and reducing the group’s use of carbon

F

Engineering: Problem-solving with Materials

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Invite families to visit the classroom and share a tool from their culture, nation of origin, or childhood
• Provide opportunities for children to learn problem-solving strategies from one another
• Challenge children to invent objects to solve common classroom or household problems (e.g., a magnetic paper-clip picker-upper)
• Look for texts that show different ways a problem has been solved throughout history (e.g., irrigation)

G

Math

1. Comparing and Categorizing

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Invite families to visit the classroom to talk about their childhoods; use Venn diagrams to compare and contrast
• Read books aloud about children who live in different kinds of families; ask the children questions about how the character’s lives are similar to and different from their own
• Visit a natural history museum or botanical garden and talk about the categories the curators use

2. Number Sense and Quantity

Child understands and explores numbers and quantity.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Engage children in a cooking activity that calls for ingredients in ½, ¼, ¾, or ¹∕₃ measures
• Ask children to write word problems that fit number sentences for their classmates to solve
• Practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division skills using Jeopardy-type games

3. Patterning

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Create AABBA patterns for classmates to complete and/or find the errors
• Practice looking at an analog clock, describing the number correspondences
• Give children a sense of time (Time sitting in silence for a minute, then do something repetitive such as snapping fingers or drawing stars for a minute, two minutes, or five minutes.)

4. Spatial Sense and Geometry

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development

• Create realistic and abstract art using shapes, lines, and understanding of orientation of those things on paper
• Observe the use of shapes in artwork from different cultures, drawing attention to the cultures of the children in the class
• Describe the properties of a shape and invite the children to name that shape
• Place shapes in a category, and ask children to name the reason for the classification