Essay: Early Childhood and Toys
Essay: Early Childhood and Toys
Remember that it is advantageous for you to complete the Critical Thinking option that corresponds to the option you selected for the final Portfolio Project, due in Week 8. If you wish to complete Portfolio Project Option #1, then also complete Critical Thinking Assignment Option #1 as well.
For this paper, you will write an essay about the games/activities/materials children use. You will name those games/activities/materials and describe which preoperational type of thinking each addresses and how each would help the child to gain one of the types of operational thinking.
Visit a preschool or early elementary school classroom, both when children are there (for you to observe them interacting with the toys) and when they are not (so you can look around the room).
[NOTE: if you are unable to access a site, you may complete the alternate assignment, below.]
Make note of all the games, toys, activities, and other materials that are in the room (including those posted on the walls and those on the toy/book shelves). These might include, for example, such things as playdough, toys, calendars, and storybooks that are available to help children to overcome types of immature thinking (i.e., centration, egocentrism, precausal thinking, nonconservation, irreversible thinking, and transductive reasoning) and to develop logical thinking typical in middle childhood (e.g., seriation, transitive inference, classification, conservation), as described in Piaget’s theory.
Alternate Assignment
If you are unable to access a site as described above, then you may submit a research paper that addresses the best practices in games/activities/materials for children available to help children to overcome types of immature thinking (i.e., centration, egocentrism, precausal thinking, nonconservation, irreversible thinking, and transductive reasoning) and to develop logical thinking typical in middle childhood (e.g., seriation, transitive inference, classification, conservation), as described in Piaget’s theory.
Describe which preoperational type of thinking each game/activity/material addresses and how each would help the child to gain one of the types of operational thinking.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages. Essay: Early Childhood and Toys
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
