Journal #2: Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget had orignally gone in to the study of being a biologist studying mulluscs. However, he later went on to study child development. He discovered that there are four specific stages of child development that a child goes through from their time of being an infant to adolecent to adult. The first stage is the sensori- motor stage. And this stage lasts from birth to 2 years of age. This is the stage in which children begin to make connections between the things they do and what happens with the object at hand. In this stage they also learn that when things are out of sight that does not mean that they are no longer around.

The next stage according to Piagets findings is the pre-opperational stage. Which occurs from 2 years of age to 7 years of age.During the pre- operational stage children begin to classify certain objects together by one simple characteristic. For example if a child was givin a wide range of colorful numbers and letters they wouldnt thin k to put all the letters in one pile and all the numbers in another. But they would find all the numbers and letters that are the same color and classify them in the sense. In this stage of development the child also begins to use their language skills. They learn to put certain objects (or pictures) with their title.

Then later down the road from the years of 7 to 11 a child will go through the concrete operational stage.In this stage children start to be able to achieve logical thinking. They can be givin a series of numbers and be able to order them from smallest to largest at age 6. At age 7 they can choose between two different items and decide which on takes up more room. And at age 9 they can deciffer whether one object is heavier then the other logically. And lastly, in the final stage of formal operation adolecents (age 11 and up) can begin to think about the "if" and "then" of everyday life. They start to use problem solving to see see how an action could turn out then are able to decide whether or not to partake in the action again learning from past experience.