Four Characteristics Of Pre-School Aged Children

Pre-school aged children think in a simple way. They have yet to process thinking in the complex way that older children do. In the complex way of branching off a single thought. Pre-school aged children do not have the ability to take a single thought and come up with different solutions or knowledge. For example, older children or even adults can take the months of the year and we know that they are more than just months. We can trace them back to history and we know why they are named the way they are and we know who created them. Young children do not get that knowledge and see everything in its simplest form. There are characteristics that Piaget came up with that go deeper into how pre-school children think. Four of the characteristics …show more content…
Egocentrism is when a child can only focus on what they see or have to do. Children do not see from someone else’s perspective. They do not understand that others have wants and need and that it is not all about that child. For example, when students are busy working on theirs stations in class and it is time for lunch, the teacher play a song for them to go to the carpet. Some students continue to work on their activity because they need to finish before they clean up. They do not understand that the teacher and the other students want to get things cleaned up and be prepared to line up for lunch. Everything is all about themselves and no one can change their minds.
These four characteristics of pre-operational thinking are just a few ways to explain why children think and act the way they do. Pre-school children do not see from others perspectives, they cannot reverse order due to lack of attention, also due to lack of attention children cannot follow multiple step instructions, and once their minds are made up about something there is no way of talking them out of it. Children’s thought processes are simple and with age that process expands and becomes more and more