2 year old preschool: 2 year old Preschool — St. Peter Lutheran School

1. The child should be able to put together phrases of 4-5 words.
2. The child understands perfectly well what adults say to him (everyday words and phrases).
3. A child can learn simple rhymes and nursery rhymes

World around
A child aged 2 to 3 should be able to:

1. The child must know the parts of the body and face.
2. The child must be able to name what, swims, flies and rides.

Life skills
A child between 2 and 3 years of age should be able to:

1. The child must be able to go down and up the stairs.
2. The child must be able to dress and undress.
3. The child must be able to use the potty independently.
4. The child can walk backwards.
5. The child must be able to balance on the bar.
6. The child must be able to draw a vertical line.
7. The child should be able to cut paper by holding scissors with one hand.
8. The child must be able to wash and dry their hands.

Children 3 to 4 years old

Child Development 3 to 4 years old. You are in the “Children from 3 to 4 years” section.

In this section, we will help you find out and determine the level of development of your child, namely, what your child should know and be able to do at the age of 3 to 4 years.
What a 3 year old should know and be able to do.

This article is for your reference and gives approximate norms for the degree of formation of your child’s mental processes at this age. You can check his potential in different areas of knowledge, find out in which areas of knowledge your child succeeds, and in which additional attention and time are required.

In this section “Children from 3 to 4 years old” we have collected all the material published on our website, which will help you and your child to study, prepare for the next, more in-depth stage of classes.

You can use the materials for your lessons at home, in kindergarten or in elementary school.

Mathematics
A child aged 3 to 4 should be able to:

1. The child should be able to count to three and show the appropriate number of fingers on the hand.
2. The child must be able to master the concepts: one – many, large – small, high – low, etc.
3. The child must know the primary colors (red, yellow, green, blue, white, black).
4. The child should know the basic geometric shapes (circle, square, triangle).
5. The child must be able to compare objects by size, color, shape. Be able to compare the number of items.
6. A child must be able to match an object with a given attribute.

Logical thinking
(Development of thinking, memory, attention)
A child aged 3 to 4 years should be able to:

1. The child should be able to fold a cut picture from 2-4 parts.
2. The child should be able to find and explain inconsistencies in the drawings.
3. The child must be able to find an extra object and explain why he made such a choice.
4. The child must be able to find similarities and differences between objects.
5. The child should be able to memorize 2-3 pictures.
6. A child should be able to memorize 3-4 words that an adult has repeated several times.
7. The child must be able to memorize and repeat the movements shown by an adult 1-2 times,
8. The child must be able to remember any detail or attribute of an object.
9. The child must be able to complete the task within 5 minutes without being distracted.
10. The child must find paired objects. Be able to choose the right one from a group of objects.
11. The child must be able to pay attention to the properties and characteristics of objects, to find similarities and differences between objects.

Speech development
A child aged 3 to 4 should be able to:

1. The child should be able not only to visually perceive images, but also to describe what he saw.
2. The child easily forms simple sentences, gradually moves to complex ones (of 5-6 words).
3. The child must be able to separate objects into groups: furniture, dishes, clothes, etc.
4. The child must be able to name one attribute of each object.
5. The child must know the names of the main actions of people and animals (lies, sits, runs, etc.)
6. The child must be able to repeat rhymes and songs after an adult.
7. The child must know his first and last name.
8. The child must be able to control the power of the voice, speak loudly – quietly.

World around
A child aged 3 to 4 should be able to:

1. The child must know the names and be able to show domestic (cow, goat, horse, cat, dog, etc.) and wild (wolf, hare, fox, etc.) animals.
2. The child must know the names of 3-4 birds (sparrow, swallow, crow), 3-4 fish (whale, catfish, shark) and 3-4 insects (grasshopper, butterfly, bee).
3. The child must know the names of the main plants: 3-4 trees (birch, oak, apple) and 3-4 flowers (chamomile, tulip, rose).
4. The child should know what vegetables, fruits, berries, mushrooms are.
5. The child must have an idea about the materials from which the surrounding objects are made.
6. The child must know the parts of the day – morning, afternoon, evening, night.
7. A child should be able to name natural phenomena – rain, snow, wind.

Household skills
A child aged 3 to 4 should be able to:

1. The child must be able to put on things independently (without fasteners).
2. The child must be able to cut paper with scissors.
3. The child must be able to use pencils, markers, pens, etc. Be able to draw circles, dots, lines.
4. The child should be able to trace and color pictures.
5. The child must know the basic rules of hygiene.

Children 4 to 5 years old

Development of Children 4 to 5 years old You are in the Children 4 to 5 years old section.

In this section, we will help you find out and determine the level of development of your child, namely, what your child should know and be able to do at the age of 4 to 5 years.
What a 4 year old should know and be able to do.

This article is for your reference and gives approximate norms for the degree of formation of your child’s mental processes at this age. You can check his potential in different areas of knowledge, find out in which areas of knowledge your child succeeds, and in which additional attention and time are required.

In this section “Children from 4 to 5 years old” we have collected all the material published on our website, which will help you and your child to study, prepare for the next, more in-depth stage of classes.

You can use the materials for your classes at home, in kindergarten or in elementary grades.

Mathematics
A child aged 4 to 5 should be able to:

1. The child should be able to determine the location of objects: right, left, middle, top, bottom, back, front.
2. The child must know the basic geometric shapes (circle, oval, square, triangle and rectangle)
3. The child must know all the numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). Count items within ten, correlate the number of items with the desired number.
4. The child must be able to arrange the numbers from 1 to 5 in the correct sequence and in reverse order.
5. The child must be able to compare the number of objects, understand the meaning: more – less, equally. Make Unequal Item Groups Equal: Add one item to a group with fewer items.
6. The child gets acquainted with the graphic image of the number, learns to write numbers correctly.

Logical thinking
(Development of thinking, memory, attention)
A child aged 4 to 5 should be able to:

1. The child should be able to find differences and similarities between two pictures (or between two toys).
2. The child must be able to fold according to the model of the building from the designer.
3. The child should be able to put together a cut picture from 2-4 parts.
4. The child must be able to complete the task within 5 minutes without being distracted.
5. The child should be able to fold the pyramid (cups, putting them into each other) without outside help.
6. The child must be able to put the missing fragments of pictures into the holes.
7. The child must be able to call a group of objects with a generalizing word (cow, horse, goat – domestic animals; winter, summer, spring – seasons). Find the extra item in each group. Find a match for each item.
8. The child should be able to answer questions such as: Is it possible to go sledding in summer? Why? Why wear warm jackets in winter? What are windows and doors for in a house? Etc.
9. The child must be able to choose opposite words: a full glass – an empty glass, a high tree – a low tree, go slowly – go quickly, a narrow belt – a wide belt, a hungry child – a child full, cold tea – hot tea, etc.
10. A child should be able to memorize pairs of words after being read by an adult: glass-water, girl-boy, dog-cat, etc.
11. The child should be able to see incorrectly depicted objects in the picture, explain what is wrong and why.

Speech Development
A child aged 4 to 5 should be able to:

1. The child must use a thousand words, build phrases from 6-8 words. Even strangers, and not just parents, should understand the child.
2. The child must understand how the structure of a person differs from the structure of animals, name their parts of the body (hands – paws, nails – claws, hair – wool).
3. The child must be able to correctly put nouns in the plural form (flower – flowers, girl – girls).
4. The child must be able to find an object according to the description (apple – round, sweet, yellow). Be able to independently write a description of the subject.
5. The child must understand the meaning of prepositions (in, on, under, behind, between, in front of, about, etc.).
6. The child must know what professions there are, what people in these professions do.
7. The child must be able to maintain a conversation: be able to answer questions and ask them correctly.
8. The child must be able to retell the content of the heard fairy tale, story. Tell by heart a few poems, nursery rhymes.
9. The child must give his first name, last name, how old he is, the city where he lives.
10. The child should be able to answer questions about recent events: Where were you today? Who did you meet along the way? What did mom buy at the store? What were you wearing?

World around
A child aged 4 to 5 should be able to:

1. The child should be able to distinguish between vegetables, fruits and berries, to know what they are when they ripen.
2. The child must know the names of insects, be able to talk about how they move (a butterfly flies, a snail crawls, a grasshopper jumps)
3. The child must know all domestic animals and their cubs.
4. The child must be able to guess the seasons from the pictures. Know the signs of each of them.

Life skills

A child between the ages of 4 and 5 should be able to:

1. The child already perfectly fastens buttons, zippers and unties shoelaces, a spoon and a fork obey him well.
2. The child should be able to string large buttons or beads onto a thread.
3. The child must be able to accurately draw lines without lifting the pencil from the paper.
4. The child should be able to shade figures with even straight lines, without going beyond the contours of the picture.
5. The child should be able to trace and color pictures without leaving the edges.
6. The child must be able to draw lines in the middle of the track without going beyond its edges.
7. The child must distinguish between the right and left hand.

Children 5 to 7 years old

Child Development 5 to 7 years old. You are in the section “Children from 5 to 7 years old”.

In this section, we will help you find out and determine the level of development of your child, namely, what your child should know and be able to do at the age of 5 to 7 years.

What a 5 year old should know and be able to do.
This article is intended for your reference and gives approximate norms for the degree of formation of your child’s mental processes at this age. You can check his potential in different areas of knowledge, find out in which areas of knowledge your child succeeds, and in which additional attention and time are required.

In this section “Children from 5 to 7 years old” we have collected all the material published on our website, which will help you and your child to study, prepare for the next, more in-depth stage of classes.

You can use the materials for your studies at home, in kindergarten or in elementary grades.

Mathematics
A child between the ages of 5 and 7 should be able to:

1. The child should be able to solve simple puzzles and puzzles.
2. The child must be able to add and subtract from numbers.
3. The child must be able to determine the direction: forward, backward, right, left, up, down.
4. The child must be able to count objects within 10 based on operations with sets.
5. The child should be able to compare numbers: equals-inequalities, more-less.
6. The child must understand and correctly answer the questions: How much? Which the? What’s the score?
7. The child must know the composition of the first ten numbers.
8. The child should be able to distinguish and name objects of round, square, triangular and rectangular shapes.
9. The child should know such geometric shapes as: square, rectangle, circle, triangle, trapezoid, rhombus; geometric bodies: cube, ball, cylinder, pyramid.
10. The child must know the signs “+”, “-“, “=”, “<;" and ">;”.
11. The child must be able to compose and solve problems in one action for addition and subtraction.
12. The child must be able to divide a circle, a square into two and four equal parts.
13. The child must know the direct and reverse order of the number series.

Logical thinking
(Development of thinking, memory, attention)
A child aged 5 to 7 years should be able to:

1. The child must be able to perform tasks in which it is necessary to identify a pattern and continue a series of proposed items.
2. The child must find an extra object from 4-5 proposed objects.
3. The child should be able to compose a story according to the proposed pictures, be able to finish the story (invent an end).
4. The child must be able to divide the proposed objects into two groups and find a common feature for each group.

Speech development
A child aged 5 to 7 should be able to:

1. The child must give his first name, last name, how old he is, the city in which he lives, what the names of his parents are, how old they are, where and by whom they work.
2. The child must know the home address, home phone number
3. The child’s speech should be as close as possible to adult speech (in terms of quality).
4. The child must know what intonation is, must use it to express his emotions.
5. The child must be able to distinguish between an incentive sentence and a declarative one, an exclamatory sentence from an interrogative one, and must be able to use them.
6. The child must be able to formulate and ask questions, build reasoning, argue.
7. The child should be able to conduct a dialogue and a monologue.
8. The child must know by heart a lot of poems learned by heart, complex and large works. He must speak with expression.

World around
A child aged 5 to 7 should be able to:

1. The child must know the names of all the objects around him: furniture, dishes, clothes, household and electrical appliances, plants, animals, natural phenomena, the names of his favorite cartoons, fairy tales, books, the names of his favorite characters.

Household skills
A child between the ages of 5 and 7 should be able to:

1. The child should be able to make phone calls.
2. The child must know how to thread a needle, how to sew on a button
3. The child must be able to behave at the table.
4. The child should brush his teeth independently, rinse his mouth after eating.
5. The child must be able to fasten buttons and tie shoelaces.
6. The child must know what it means to be neat, must be able to take care of the hair, the nails and the condition of the clothes.
7. The child must know what a traffic light is for, what each color of a traffic light is for, how and where it is possible to cross the road.
8. The child must know the name of the current month, the sequence of days of the week.

Special thinking of a preschooler – Psychologos

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​“Why does the wind blow?” , “Where do the rivers come from?”, “What’s in the radio?”… Dozens and hundreds of questions are brought down on the heads of adults by a 4-5-year-old kid. As a rule, in a hurry, in a fuss, we simply dismiss them, sometimes, busy with our thoughts, we answer something, sometimes they make us think. Indeed, how to explain to a child where children come from, why the grass is green? Years will pass before the child is ready to perceive the scientific picture of the world, learns and understands those “internal mechanisms” that underlie the phenomena that puzzle him. But the baby cannot and does not want to wait: he needs to answer now, without delay.

The process of active cognition, exploration of the world, thinking begins long before our child becomes a preschooler. Here is a one-year-old kid, picking up some kind of sharp object, enthusiastically scratches furniture and wallpaper with it, here is a 2-year-old child carefully taking apart a toy: what is inside?

“What’s inside?” – this is the main task of human thinking. To understand the internal connections of phenomena, to look beyond the surface of the externally visible, tangible – perception cannot cope with this, here we need an inquisitive, comparing, measuring, penetrating human thought everywhere. At first, in the first years of a child’s life, thought still cannot do without a hand: a 2-year-old baby “thinks with his hands”, taking apart, scratching, breaking – in a word, transforming objects in a form accessible to him. So far, the child’s thinking is only visually effective – immersed in direct and active action, changing things. This is his strength and this is his limitation. The thinking of a one-year-old and a two-year-old is occupied only with what is nearby, what can be touched, felt, tasted, unscrewed or disassembled.

But already at this time, imperceptibly and gradually, a “great upheaval” is being prepared in the child’s thinking: the child forms the means by which he can name, designate, and therefore imagine and represent phenomena and their connections. And the most powerful of these means is speech. By the age of 3, the child actively learns several thousand words, knows how to grammatically transform them, link them into sentences. The world in which the child lives seems to double: now it is not only the external, visible, audible, tangible world, but also the world reflected in words, ideas, concepts. The world, as it were, passed into the human consciousness.

The possibilities of thinking increase unprecedentedly. Now it can cover the entire “universe”: not only the surrounding objects, but also the phenomena of nature, the cosmos, and the sphere of social relations of people, and the sphere of the psyche. You cannot touch the stars and planets with your hands, you cannot disassemble your head and see where the dream is. But you can ask about it. And the preschooler asks, asks, asks endlessly…

But in order to skillfully, understandably answer, you need to know what kind of answers a preschooler expects from us. To know the “language” in which the child’s thinking “speaks”. In other words, to know the features, patterns of children’s thinking.

What if you try to ask questions that interest a preschooler to him? Thought at first glance unexpected, but only at first glance. After all, in order to answer the child, it is necessary to find out what he already knows and what he does not yet know. And not only what, but also how. How does a child think? Jean Piaget raised this question back in the 20s of our century: he asked children of different ages to give an explanation of the phenomena of nature and space, phenomena of the psyche, to tell about the structure and reasons for the operation of the simplest instruments and machines … And he discovered an amazing thing.

It turned out that when answering these questions, children often inspire nature, attribute to inanimate things the ability to think, feel, desire. The sun shines so that people are warm and light; the wind blows to drive the sailboats, the night comes so that people go to bed. The phenomena of nature, as it were, are aware of the needs and needs of man, they want to make sure that he lives well and comfortably. Jean Piaget called this feature of children’s thinking animism (from Latin animus – soul). Initially, children spiritualize everything, even inanimate objects (if you hit a stone, it will hurt), a little later – only those that move, then – only objects and phenomena capable of independent movement (water, wind), finally, they attribute the ability to think and feel only for animals and humans.

Where does this amazing peculiarity of a preschooler’s thinking come from – to see life, soul, psyche where, from the point of view of an adult, it is absurd to see them? Many found the cause of children’s animism in the unique vision of the world that a child develops by the beginning of preschool age. For us adults, the whole world is ordered, sorted out. In the mind of an adult there is a clear line between living and inanimate, active and passive objects, in most cases we accurately distinguish between external, objective events and events occurring in our own mental world.

For a baby, there are simply no such strict boundaries, the phenomena and objects of the external and internal worlds are not yet separated by an impenetrable line; not only inanimate, in our opinion, objects for a child can have mental properties, but also internal, mental phenomena have the properties of external, material things: for example, a dream, according to a baby, comes to him from the outside, can enter his eyes, into his head, get out of it and go to another person. Like a material object, it moves in space and occupies a certain place in it. It is this unsteadiness, instability, blurring of the boundaries between external and internal, physical and mental that underlies the “animistic” thinking of a preschooler.

It would seem that this is a completely understandable explanation. And yet… “Where does this blurring of boundaries come from? the reader will ask. – Does it arise independently, with the inevitability of a spontaneous phenomenon, or is it the result of training, education? The questions are correct. And in fact, a preschooler is not a newborn, for 3-4 years he went through a long and difficult path of mental development. His thinking is heir to the wealth accumulated during infancy and early childhood. Isn’t there the source of children’s animism?

Let’s remember our first games with a 1-year-old and 2-year-old baby, pay attention to the forms of verbal communication: “The doll wants to eat”, “The bear went to sleep”, “The porridge asks to be eaten” . .. All our speech addressed to baby, is literally saturated with “animistic” designs. Of course, we do not at all put such a meaning into them, we do not at all want to consciously instill in the child a tendency to spiritualize inanimate things: it’s easier, more understandable to just say that. Also more efficient. A two-year-old is much more willing to obey the request of Pinocchio put on his fingers than the direct order of an adult.

Is it only in communication with a child that we saturate our speech with animisms? “It is raining”, “The sun has risen”, “Water has spilled” – we say to each other as if in fact rain, sun, water can show activity and will. For us, this is a convention; we somehow understand that these speech turns do not imply the spirituality of objects. What about a 2 year old? He takes words literally. The metaphorical context of our speech is hidden from him. If the doll “wants to sleep” – then she really wants to; if the vacuum cleaner frightening the baby, according to the mother, is “good and kind”, then he is really free to do good and bad deeds. So it turns out: the animism of thinking of a preschooler is nothing to be surprised at. On the contrary, one should be surprised if it did not exist.

Is this good or bad? The practice of our communication with a preschool child has long answered this question. Are we reading fairy tales to children? Do we watch cartoons? Do we role-play with him? But the world of fairy tales, cartoons, games is full of “living objects”, unusual phenomena. Animals speak and act like people, inanimate objects have a psyche and soul, the most amazing events, unusual transformations are common in a fairy tale or a game. In this special, animated world, a preschooler easily and simply masters the connections of phenomena, masters a large stock of knowledge, a scientific, “adult” understanding of which is still inaccessible to him. Indeed, how to scientifically explain the origin of the wind to a 4-5-year-old kid, how to answer why the stars do not fall to the ground, how to introduce him into the world of struggle between good and evil? And in a fairy tale, in a game it is easy and simple.

In other words, a fairy tale, a game is a special way of mastering the world, a way that allows a preschooler in a specific form to appropriate, understand and systematize in his own way the stream of events that falls on him from all sides and who does not want to wait until the child’s thinking will become “scientific”. And such, albeit unscientific, albeit temporary, systematization is necessary for the child: it reduces the “tension of misunderstanding”, harmonizes the mind of the baby, makes the world understandable, and therefore pleasant and convenient. Makes it a world that is interesting to live in, that you want to explore better and understand more deeply.

But let’s look at things from the other side. After all, the thought of a preschooler is not always interested in global issues. Like a younger child, he continues to actively explore the objects of his environment, for hours he is ready to delve into a new complex toy, mess around in the sand, and launch boats on the water. Experimenting with objects available to him, the kid not only asks questions, but also tries to explain the reasons for the action of mechanisms, the properties of a magnet, bodies floating or sinking in water.

One of the psychologists conducted an experiment: he showed children 4-7 years old small tricks and asked them to explain them. Here is a coin, lowered into the sleeve, appears in the hand of the experimenter; here is a piece of paper attached to the open end of a test tube half-filled with water, stubbornly refusing to fall, although the test tube was turned upside down… It turned out that the children explain these phenomena without revealing any traces of animism. Of course, they incorrectly indicate the reasons, the coin ended up in the hand because “there was a hole in the sleeve”, the leaf does not fall because it “stuck”. But these incorrect explanations are quite in the spirit of modern science; the children did not turn to any “desires”, “wants” of inanimate objects as an explanatory principle.

AV Zaporozhets and GD Lukov conducted similar experiments: in front of a child, various objects were thrown into the water and asked to explain why some of them float and others sink. And here, preschoolers thought quite “scientifically”: if an object sinks, then because it is “big” or “iron”, if it floats, then because it is “small” or “wooden”. The explanations could be the most bizarre, and only older preschoolers gave answers close to the truth, but something else is interesting, the children did not turn to the idea of ​​animism.

The conclusion suggests itself: those phenomena and objects that are close and accessible to the child, which he can explore, touch, reproduce, very quickly lose their status of animation in his eyes, turn into ordinary phenomena and objects. Let the baby still not know their true causes, their internal structure (after all, you and I cannot always correctly indicate the cause of an unknown event), but he is looking for these reasons where the consciousness of an adult is looking for them – in a continuous and law-like chain of causes and consequence of nature.

On the contrary, those phenomena and processes that are far from his direct experience (the flow of rivers, the movement of celestial bodies, etc.), which he can observe, but cannot do anything with them, the natural causes of which elude the mental gaze of the child and go beyond the limits of his small “scientific” universe – they are endowed with a baby with human properties, have a “psyche and soul”.

But does this mean that the animism of a preschooler is a phenomenon of the child’s purely verbal, “verbal” thinking? That he exists only in words? If this is so, then it is not of great importance in the development of children’s thinking, because thinking is, first of all, an action, an active transformation and mastering of things. And the difference between word and deed is very great. Perhaps, in words, the baby expresses faith in the animation of inanimate things, but in reality, in the real practice of communicating and handling them, he does not at all believe that they can think, make decisions, or undergo magical transformations. Or maybe, on the contrary, in the words of a 4-5-year-old kid explains the phenomena quite scientifically, but in reality he believes in the possibility of the magical, unusual, supernatural?

Let’s try to check. Our experience is easy to carry out at home. We will make sure that first the child meets with an unusual, magical phenomenon in the field of verbal description, and then in a real life situation. Let’s tell the child the fairy tale “Magic Box”. Its essence in brief is as follows: one of my father’s acquaintances gives the girl Masha a box that can turn pictures with objects drawn on them into the objects themselves; it is worth putting the picture in the box and loudly (otherwise the box will not hear) say the “magic” words: “Alpha, beta, gamma”, and a real object will appear in the box instead of the picture. An acquaintance provided Masha with small pictures with objects drawn on them (a gold ring, a beautiful brooch, a fountain pen, a lighter, a spider and a wasp). At first, the girl did not believe in the possibility of such magic, but once, having tried it, she was convinced of the magical properties of the box.

Now let’s ask the kid: why does the box turn pictures into objects? Can this be in real life? Can, for example, a portrait of a person turn into the person himself? Ordinary preschoolers aged 4-7 give similar answers: the box turns objects because it is magical, but this cannot be in life. In a fairy tale, cartoon, game – please, in real life – no. Why? Yes, because there is no magic in life, no box can hear the speech addressed to it and obey only the thought and desire of a person.

Let’s continue our experience. After 2-3 days, we will offer the baby a beautiful box, attach drawings with the mentioned objects to it and, as if by chance, make an assumption: “Maybe this is the same box from the fairy tale?” We will show the child real objects: a ring, a brooch, a lighter: “Look, maybe a magic box made all this for me?” Of course, the child will not believe us, he will smile skeptically . .. but let’s not rush. Let’s leave him alone with the pictures and the casket, and we ourselves, under a plausible pretext, will leave the room.

What will the child do? Special experiments have shown: in such a situation, most preschoolers immediately begin “magic” manipulations; they quickly put one picture after another into the box (except, of course, a spider and a wasp), pronounce magic words, and even make passes with their hands – like real wizards. Not seeing the effect, the child is surprised: “Didn’t it turn?” “A picture again!” he exclaims in annoyance. Only a few children of 4-6 years old mastered an unfamiliar object in a “rational” way, as an adult would do: they twisted it, looked at pictures, laid out “solitaire” from them, but did not try to “transform” it.

So, our children’s words and deeds really diverged: in words, most children deny the possibility of magical transformations in the sphere of real life, but in reality they believe and hope that the box will transform the object. In words, the box is an inanimate thing, but in reality the child seeks to influence it as a living being, capable of hearing him and obeying his desires. It turns out that one cannot say that in relation to things familiar, accessible to practice and manipulation, the preschooler has overcome animism.

One must ask oneself: what kind of thinking are we talking about? About verbal thought, about “thought in reasoning” or about “thought-action”, “thought-act”? After all, verbal thinking is abstract, abstract: in words you can believe or not believe in the possibility of magic – little will change in life from this. Another thing is thought in action. Influencing objects, transforming them, the child makes changes in the real world. Changes that may be irreversible and affect the baby’s own life, satisfy or limit his needs, interests. In terms of verbal thought, even the youngest preschooler is losing faith in the spirituality of objects familiar to him; in fact, under certain conditions, it still tries to “persuade” the subject.

And this means that in relation to the cognition of the causes of phenomena, the junior schoolchild is, as it were, at a crossroads. On the one hand, by attributing to objects and phenomena the ability to determine their own actions, a preschooler can receive and master a huge amount of the most heterogeneous and contradictory information, without worrying about its strict systematization and natural-science “linkage”; without this ability, the child would simply be unable to cope with an avalanche of various information, would feel confused and depressed.

On the other hand, the influence of the scientific, “rational” picture of the world, which has its support in the concept of natural causality, is increasingly stronger in his verbal, and gradually in his effective thinking. This prepares the child’s thinking for a new stage of development – the stage of schooling, the stage at which the scientific picture of the world is gradually and consciously mastered by him.

Many parents and educators feel and understand this complexity and inconsistency of thinking of a preschooler. They will not dismiss the child’s “too complex” question and give “scientific” answers to it. They will be able to give an answer in a witty and fabulous way. That is why “Aibolit” or “Alice in Wonderland” are good because in a fabulous, close and understandable form for a child, they tell him about complex issues; about good and evil, the characters and relationships of people. A fairy tale, a magical event, a “changeling” is necessary for a child. In the same place where the child can and wants to independently explore the object, learn its structure and functions, we will, if possible, not interfere with it. After all, such a study – albeit with some “losses” for adults – is the basis of the still emerging, but so important and necessary in the future, natural science thinking.

Until now, we have been talking about only one of the aspects of the preschooler’s thinking – the features of his cognition of the causal relationships of phenomena. Now let’s turn to another. Let’s try to understand how the child comes to the realization of the fact of the integrity and stability of the objects of the external world.

In fact, it is possible to think, establish causal relationships, explore an object only when this object appears to us as something integral and unified, as something that differs from other objects and is stable in time. It is worth imagining that this condition is violated – and the world will turn into a chaos of continuously changing, flowing and transforming into each other forms.

“But is there any doubt that a preschooler perceives objects as stable, because he sees the same objects that we adults see: furniture, houses, cars, natural phenomena?” the reader will ask.

This, of course, is unlikely. We do not know how a 4-5-year-old kid sees objects, because he has his own, special vision of the world. But most likely, he sees them as stable, because they are really simple, unchanging, as if frozen for a while in those “shells” that nature and man have prepared for them. But what about those objects that are constantly changing shape, keeping only individual properties unchanged? Water poured from vessel to vessel changes form, but its quantity remains the same; a piece of plasticine, turned into a sculpture, retains the same weight, volume, the same amount of substance. Does a preschooler understand this?

Let’s check this: let’s ask the child to compare the amount of liquid in two identical, narrow and tall glasses with the same amount of water. “Are these glasses of water the same, or is one more and the other less?” – We ask the baby. Usually the answer is stereotyped: the same. And now let’s put another, wide and low, empty glass next to it and pour water into it from one narrow glass. The water level will drop. Let’s repeat our question. This is where another interesting feature of children’s thought is revealed: most preschoolers believe that the amount of liquid in a wide glass has changed. The height of the column has decreased, which means that there is less water, they argue. Let’s pour water from a wide glass into a narrow one – and the children will again say that the water has become even. Of course, the children see that during the transfusion we did not add or subtract anything to the water, and yet it became less. What’s the matter?