Piagetian Tasks

Over the weekend, I did three tasks with my niece who is 3 1/2 years old. She was very excited to participate.

First I did the water task with her. When I asked if they had the same amount of water, she said yes. Then I poured it into another cup and asked the same question. She said yes again. I asked her why and she said, pointing to the taller cup, "this is a bigger cup" (moving her finger up and down the cup) I dont know if it is coincidence that she got it right but she did try explaining it to me. If she truly understood that they had the same amount of liquid it would be in the concrete operations stage.

The next task I did the stick task. I asked if they were the same length. She said yes. Then I moved one to the right. When I asked her if one stick was longer than the other, she said yes and pointed to the stick I did not move, the one directly in front of her. This response is in the preoperational stage.

The last one I did was the penny one. She agreed that they had the same amount of pennies but when I spread the one row apart, she said that the row I changed had more pennies. This is also preoperational thinking.

This was a lot of fun to do. My niece wanted to test me afterwards!