I worked with a six year old little girl named Lyla. When I asked Lyla “What holds the sun up in the sky?”, she replied, “nothing.” When I asked her “Why do trees have leaves?”, she replied, “I don’t know.” When I asked Lyla “Why does it rain?”, she replied, “So we can have water, duh!”. In the conservation of liquid task, I place two clear solo cups on a counter and I filled them equally with fruit punch, I had a clear empty vase on the side. I asked Lyla, “Do both cups have the same amount of punch in them?”, she replied, “Yes”. I then poured the punch out of one cup into the vase, as Lyla observed. I then asked Lyla, “Does the vase have the same amount of punch as the cups?”, she said “NO!”, I then asked why, and she replied, “The vase has waaaaay more because it’s taller, and it gives it more.” I then poured the punched in the vase back into a clear solo cup and I asked Lyla, “What about now?”, and she said, “Now it’s the same again!”, she thought it was really neat! After this experiment I did the conservation of number task. I placed two rows of ten skittles in front of Lyla. The skittles in both rows were exactly the same, they had the same color, size, shape, and distance apart. I asked Lyla, “Are both rows the same?”, and she replied, “Yep!”. Then I spread one row of skittles out so that it became longer than the other one. I asked Lyla, “Which row has more now?”, she pointed at the longer one. I asked, “Why is that?” and she responded, “Because the bigger one always has more!” I am not a firm believer of Piaget’ stage of preoperational thought. Some children have different personalities and different environments, which cause them to act and think different. Lyla has an eight year old sister that influences her greatly, Lyla usually copies her sister and has a more mature personality for her age. Although Piagets theory is pretty accurate, not all children will have the same response, because…
