Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Mollie In Preschool
The essay that I read was titled "Mollie In Preschool" by Vivian Gussin Paley. The essay is in most parts the words of a preschooler named mollie. She is involving herself in a lot of imaginary or symbolic play in her classroom on this particualr day that the author is observering. Mollie pretends to be lots of different characters such as a wet butterfly, wonderwoman, the big bad wolf, one of the three pigs etc. This symbolic play falls right into the preoperational thought stage of life that Piaget discovered. Preoperational stage is known to between the ages of 2 and seven. I know from my personal experience with having a 3 year old son that with out his imagination life would not be as interesting to him. Even though he may be playing with a small toy, there is a big scene taking place in his imagination. Mollie uses a lot of assimilation in her symbolic play. At one point during the essay Mollie is combining the characters of 4 stories, "The Mushroom in the Rain", "The Three Pigs", Hansel and Gretel", and "Wonderwoman". Mollie assimulates all of these stories and makes up her own individual imaginary play. When becoming a teacher i will be able to know how to comunicate with the young children by drawing them pictures and allowing them to use their imagination to assimulate old things they have learned and new things a want to introduce to them. This will help my young students broadened knowledge of those old ideas
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4 comments:
Imagination! Whenever I observe a child with a vivid imagination, I always think, "What a great writer he will be!" But, sometimes I do worry that too much imagination is not healthy. Certainly we as teachers hope that the children that we serve can distinguish between real and unreal. Some younger children find this a challenge. As teachers, we have to really know if ours students have this ability.
I think the material we cover in Cognitive must be even more interesting to you who are parents! I love that you are able to see Piaget's theory at work in your own children! It must be easy for you to understand the force that drove him to begin systematically observing his own children!
Wow! This story reminds me of my childhood and some of my adulthood(sometimes). I have always like to blend the real world with some make believe in order to made it more fun and interesting.
It is important to know what a child is thinking. Each child differs in many complex ways, it is up to us to pave the right path for their minds.
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