Children think differently than adults.

Have you ever wondered why maturity is defined by one's cognitive skills and not just by age?

According to Jean Piaget, cognitive theory; is concerned with the development of a person's thought processes which influence how they understand and interact with the world.

I remembered vividly a "philosophy class" I attended and was taught a topic on School of thought and in all, PRAGMATISM is the only one that relates with the cognitive skills based on this statement: "Education is developing the habit of problem-solving".

Also, In Reggio Emilia after world war two. Schools were destroyed and that lead to the origination of the Reggio Emilia from Italy in 1945.

Its focus is to find an early childhood curriculum that promotes critical thinking and collaboration among children so, as to develop the cognitive skills to think outside the box, and this leads to the involvement of parents (community), children, and the environment as important stakeholders to learning. It recommences the use of local free home materials as learning resources.

This is the sole essence of cognitive skills, having the ability to use the brain to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention.

Working together, they take incoming information and move it into the bank of knowledge you use every day at school, at work, and in life.

In the words of Jean Piaget, " the principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done."

Imagine, having an education system based on child's centered method other than the teacher-centered method we are all taught with. The child's centered method is a great way of developing the cognitive skills of students because it keeps them active and engaged. That's why I love my college experience because opportunities were created for me to brainstorm.

Providing children with materials and an environment for them to brainstorm exercises the cognitive skills of the child because "Every curiosity leads to litigations".

Research has shown that this type of educational method offers every child irrespective of background or physical state the chance to develop and blossom.

The sole essence of this article is to throw more light or improve our understanding, that a child is not a smaller version of adults but the peak of adulthood because some childhood experiences reoccur in the adult stage of life.

So, it's all about the PROCESS and not the RESULTS.

Here, some activities to help boost the cognitive skills:

1. Chase games,
2. Building blocks,
3. Preparation before and revising after classes,
4. Playing varieties of puzzles like alphabetic, words, shapes, and number puzzles.
5. Articles
6. Visual displays or video: visual displays are very important because what the eye sees is very hard to forget. example, pictures with objects and illustrations.

So, if I have to advise other students, my advice will be that everyone should be open-minded and be ready to listen, appreciate, consider and embrace others' perspectives or Sentiments different from theirs.

Thank You!