Friday Group - Contact Paper

With the small size of the Friday Group I thought I take a moment to look closely at the children's explorations in the context of Jean Piaget's stages of cognitive development. From birth until about 18 months children learn about their world through their senses, reflexes, and physical activity. They are in what Piaget calls the sensorimotor stage of development. By manipulating materials children experiment with cause and effect and become more confident in their abilities to discover and make an impact on their surroundings.

Watch in the following video as Sebastien & Kaia work to pull up different materials from the contact paper and also use their mouths to further explore the fabric. They are both very industrious and exert a lot of physical energy in their exploration.

Children begin to categorize and reorganize information in their brains based on what they have discovered with their bodies. Ever wonder why a baby will do an activity over and over and over again? They are using their senses to unravel the mysteries of life that surround them, basically, their brains are encoding physical input from their movements and activity into information they can utilize. This is why they pull up on the unstable basket, drop an item from their high chair, or put every toy in their mouth time after time. In the following video, both Kaia and Sebastien perform actions that we have seen in the previous playgroup sessions. Kaia plays the "where's Kaia" game while Sebastien gives the velcro another taste. I found it interesting that this interaction was both children's first moments with the contact paper and that they replayed previous interactions with the materials.