According to Piaget, children are in the stage of perceptual movement from birth to 2 years old. At this time, children mainly rely on muscle movements and feelings to explore the outside world and intuitively think about the actual things they perceive. Adults should have more contact with infants and young children during this period, provide them with some intuitive and perceptible stimuli, consolidate the existing reflexes of infants and young children, practice and develop new habitual movements, and form purposeful movements, so as to achieve the differentiation and coordination of means and purposes. Through these exercises, babies can develop new ways to cope with new situations. For example, there are toys on the tablecloth. When the child can't reach the toy with his hands, he grabs the tablecloth first and then pulls the tablecloth to get the toy. The action of grabbing and pulling here is original, but pulling the tablecloth and holding the toy is new. From this example, we can find that the baby's thinking needs action to support it. At the same time, we should also pay attention to the basic role of early action exercises in the development of subsequent higher-level actions.
Teachers in nurseries and kindergartens should also pay attention to the education of babies in this period. We can't simply think that infants at this time are limited by their mobility and just sleep in cribs, and only pay attention to those crying children. In fact, the younger children are, the more we adults need to give them contact and attention. At this time, the baby's activity ability is insufficient, and we need the help of adults to help them realize sports. For example, in developing children's sports ability, we can help the baby turn over from the beginning, let him try to lie down for a while, and often help the baby to do massage; When the baby can crawl, we should guide the baby to exercise more and play some games of finding things and running, so that the baby can further develop his skeletal muscle and body balance ability during exercise; When you are older, you can help your baby stand for a while, drive for a while, help him learn to walk step by step, and then encourage him to explore independently on a larger scale. In addition, teachers in nurseries and kindergartens should also encourage parents to come to kindergartens more often, participate in the education and activities of infants and children, and teach parents to play some parent-child games, which can not only enhance their feelings with children, but also promote their physical and mental development.
In the middle and late stage of perceptual movement, children acquire the concept of permanence of objects. Piaget called this achievement "Copernicus Revolution", which is of great significance to children's intellectual development. As Mr. Hu said: "His role in the perceptual exercise period is to help children get in touch with the egocentric tendency, divide the subject and object, and make children realize that they are a member of the objective world." The permanent acquisition of an object is not only influenced by children's physiological factors, but also helps children to acquire it better through usual practice. On the issue of early childhood education, adults should make full use of and cultivate opportunities to help children form the concept of eternal objects. Parents should play parent-child games with their children more often, such as swinging far and near, hide and seek, hiding things, etc., so that children can realize the changes in the spatial position of objects, thus realizing the permanence of objects. At the same time, parents can also try to play a short-term separation game with their children, so that children can gradually reduce their anxiety of separation from their parents and let them realize that short-term separation of parents does not mean permanent separation. Finally, children can realize that the object is permanent and feel more secure at the same time. Teachers in nurseries and kindergartens should realize the great significance of the concept of object permanence to children's intellectual development, and also use their professional knowledge and skills to help children form this concept as soon as possible.
Children from 2 to 7 years old enter the pre-calculation stage, which is the stage when children prepare for exercise before. At this stage, children use symbols (language symbols and symbols) to replace external things and attach importance to external activities. Children began to get rid of specific actions and use symbolic format to carry out "symbolic thinking" in their minds. In this period, children can use some symbols (such as language or psychological phenomena) to symbolize external things and have a symbolic thinking (usually at the age of 2 to 4). For example, children at this time will regard dolls as their own children and blocks as cars, which is actually a symbol. Children of this age like to immerse themselves in their own imaginary games. They tend to be animist and think that flowers and trees are alive. We adults should understand and respect this behavior of children. In our daily education and life, we adults should also make use of these thinking characteristics of children and seize the opportunity to educate. For example, if children believe that flowers and trees are alive, they can be educated on environmental protection, telling them that "grass is also afraid of pain, so don't step on it casually" and "flowers will be sad if they leave their mothers, so don't pick flowers". Although these are logically wrong, children believe it very much. Compared with those boring environmental laws and regulations, this kind of education is more suitable for children.
In kindergarten, teachers should support, encourage and guide children of this age to play some role games. In the game, children can imitate some actions and behaviors of adults in real life and get psychological satisfaction. They can also use this to exert their imagination, exercise their thinking, practice their oral expression skills and learn to get along with others. Teachers can intervene in children's role games as players, interact with children in a touching way, guide children to think positively in time, let the games develop further on the original basis, and let children constantly improve themselves. In addition, teachers and parents should also pay attention to the fact that children at this stage often have a wrong understanding of some things because of their lack of thinking level and social experience, and sometimes confuse assumptions with facts, resulting in some lying behaviors. At this time, as teachers and parents, we should be patient with these unreasonable behaviors of children and give them patient and meticulous guidance so that they can get a correct understanding.
At the age of 4 ~ 7, children begin to progress from imagery thinking to operational thinking, but their judgment is still limited by the automatic adjustment of intuitive imagery and is in the stage of intuitive semi-logical thinking. The prominent feature of children's thinking at this stage is self-centeredness, that is, the phenomenon that children focus on their own opinions and actions. In most cases, children at this stage think that external things are what they directly perceive, and they can't observe things from their internal relations and take a more objective view. For example, the famous "Three Mountains Experiment" illustrates this phenomenon. At this stage, children will be very opinionated and think that what they are doing is right. At this time, it is useless for us adults to tell them anything. They will only trust their own eyes. So what should be done to make children correct their mistakes? The answer is simple, that is, let children realize their mistakes first, and then we will give them the necessary help. For example, in the "Three Mountains Experiment" experiment, children can only see their own mountains, so what they say is not comprehensive. If you take children to observe from different angles, children will naturally realize their mistakes, which is more effective than saying a lot of profound truths.
Compared with the education of children in primary and secondary schools, the education of preschool children is more difficult. Because children at this stage can't express their ideas clearly, many parents can't understand their children's needs, so that they ignore or even contain their special needs. If they know more about the psychology of preschool children, they may realize how ridiculous their behavior is. As a professional preschool educator, we should not only fully respect children in teaching practice, but also provide timely and appropriate education for children's age and thinking characteristics, and also popularize relevant knowledge to parents of children to form educational synergy.