Development of thinking in children. Intuitive and analytical thinking

Security modern quality education based on its fundamental nature and compliance with the current and future needs of the individual, society and state - the main task Russian educational policy, to achieve which it is necessary to more fully use the potential visual arts as a means of forming and developing the emotional-sensual, creative, constructive principle, promoting harmonious development individual who meets the requirements for modern graduates schools

An important task of a preschool institution is, along with the transfer of knowledge, the formation of skills and abilities, the identification and development of students’ abilities. One of the creative abilities is the ability of artistic and imaginative thinking. Raising a creative person who thinks outside the box and easily solves the problems that arise before him in a constantly changing modern world, can be solved as a result of a more complete disclosure of the creative potential of the individual, through the development of artistic and imaginative thinking, which is carried out in the process of visual activity. The development of a preschooler's thinking is closely related to the development of other cognitive processes. Characterizing the general course intellectual development child, the famous Russian physiologist I.M. Sechenov wrote: “... the roots of a child’s thought lie in feeling. This follows from the fact that all the mental interests of early childhood are focused exclusively on objects of the external world, and the latter are cognized primarily through the organs of vision, touch and hearing.” .

During the period of preschool childhood, a transition occurs from visual-effective thinking (typical of children 3-4 years old) to visual-figurative (5-6 years old) and verbal (6-7 years old).

Special studies by G.I. Minskaya showed that the experience accumulated by a child in solving visual-effective problems (the formation of orientation mechanisms in the conditions of the task and the activation of verbal forms of communication) can have a decisive influence on the transition to visual-figurative and verbal thinking. In other words, for the development of a child’s thinking, the organization of attention, the formation of speech, etc. are important.

The famous psychologist J. Piaget identifies four stages in the development of a child’s intelligence. At the stage of sensorimotor, or practical thinking (from birth to 2 years), the child learns about the world around him as a result of his actions, movements, and manipulations with objects (visual-effective thinking). With the advent of speech, the stage of pre-operational thinking begins (lasting from 2 to 7 years), during which speech develops and the ability to mentally (internally) imagine external objective actions (visual-figurative and verbal-logical thinking) is formed.

Figurative thinking is the main type of thinking of a preschool child. In its simplest forms, it appears already in early childhood, revealing itself in the solution of a narrow range of practical problems related to the child’s objective activity, using the simplest tools. By the beginning of preschool age, children solve in their minds only those tasks in which the action performed by a hand or tool is directly aimed at achieving a practical result - moving an object, using it, or changing it.

The main feature of visual-figurative thinking is that the child solves life problems not only in the course of practical actions with objects, which is typical for visual-active thinking of the early period of development, but also in the mind based on images - ideas about these objects. The successful implementation of these mental procedures is possible only if the child can combine and combine in his mind different parts of objects and things, and, in addition, identify in them essential invariant features that are important for solving various problems. The level of formation of visual-figurative thinking is determined mainly by the development of visual perception, short-term and long-term memory. By approximately the age of four, a preschooler has generally completed the process of formation of basic mental functions, which creates the necessary basis for the formation and intensive development of the child’s visual-figurative thinking. It is also appropriate to recall the position of L.S. Vygotsky about direct influence emerging speech on the rooting and intensification of the development of visual-figurative thinking and the formation of its reflexive characteristics.

N.N. Poddyakov researched special type the child’s thinking, which is aimed at identifying the properties and connections of objects hidden from observation. This type of thinking has been called childhood experimentation. [p.18].

The development of imaginative thinking is facilitated by games, design, applications, drawing, listening to fairy tales, dramatization and other children's productive activities.

During preschool age, forms of mental activity such as judgment and inference also develop. In child psychology, there has long been debate regarding children's ability to engage in these forms of thinking. There is no reason to equate children's judgments and conclusions with adults. But we can’t talk about children’s lack of logic. The child tries to explain what is observed, but cannot draw the correct conclusion due to limited experience.

A child's thinking is connected with his knowledge. N. N. Poddyakov discovered such trends in the development of knowledge in children. The first is that in the process of mental activity there is an expansion of the volume and deepening of clear, clear knowledge about the world around us. This stable knowledge forms the core of the child’s cognitive sphere. The second trend suggests that at the same time a circle of vague, not entirely clear knowledge appears and grows, appearing in the form of guesses, assumptions, and questions. For the development of children's thinking, it is very important that, along with the formation of a core of stable knowledge, there is continuous growth and vague, unclear knowledge, which is a powerful stimulus for children’s mental activity.

Children's experimentation is not set by adults, but is built by the child himself. Like experimentation in adults, it is aimed at understanding the properties and connections of objects and is carried out as control of one or another phenomenon: a person acquires the ability to cause or stop it, change it in one direction or another. In the process of experimentation, the child receives new, sometimes unexpected information, which often leads to a restructuring of both the actions themselves and the child’s ideas about the object. In this activity, the moment of self-development is clearly visible: transformations of an object reveal to the child its new, more complex transformations.

The thinking process involves not only the use of already worked out schemes and ready-made methods of action, but also the construction of new ones (of course, within the capabilities of the child himself). Experimentation stimulates the child to search for new actions and contributes to the courage and flexibility of children's thinking. The possibility of independent experimentation gives the child the opportunity to try different methods of action, while removing the fear of making mistakes and the constraint of children's thinking by ready-made schemes.

In the process of experimentation, the child acquires new, unclear knowledge. Poddyakov put forward the assumption that the thinking process develops not only from ignorance to knowledge (from incomprehensible to understandable, from unclear knowledge to clearer and more definite), but also in the opposite direction - from understandable to incomprehensible, from definite to indefinite. The ability to form your own, albeit still unclear, guesses, to be surprised, to ask yourself and others questions is no less important in the development of thinking than reproduction ready-made schemes and assimilation of knowledge given to adults. It is this ability that best develops and manifests itself in the process of children's experimentation.

The development of a child’s ideas is particularly influenced by the imagination developed by artistic creativity. Artistic imagination is the main component of imaginative thinking. Imagination has a universal universal value, as a component of any creative activity and creative attitude to life, no matter how they manifest themselves. A developed imagination is necessary for a person, since, deprived of imagination, he always becomes at a dead end in front of something new, cannot comprehend its essence and approaches it with stereotyped, habitual ideas.

Domestic psychologists and teachers (L.S. Vygotsky, V.V. Davydov, A.V. Zaporozhets, N.N. Poddyakov, N.A. Vetlugina, N.P. Sakulina, E.A. Flerina, etc.) proved that the creative potential of children manifests itself already in preschool age and their development occurs when they master socially developed means of activity in the process of specially organized training. Thus, V.V. Davydov in the afterword to the book by L.S. Vygotsky’s “Imagination and Creativity in Childhood” indicates that creativity is “a constant companion of child development.”[p. 81].

Children make many discoveries and create interesting, sometimes original product in the form of a drawing, design, poem, etc. (E.A. Florina, G.V. Labunskaya, N.P. Sakulina, K.I. Chukovsky, J. Rodari, N.A. Vetlugina, N.N. Poddyakov, etc.). The novelty of discoveries and products is subjective, this is the first important feature children's creativity.

At the same time, the process of creating a product for a preschooler is almost of paramount importance. The child’s activity is characterized by great emotional involvement, the desire to seek and try different solutions many times, receiving special pleasure from this, sometimes much more than from achieving the final result (A.V. Zaporozhets, N.N. Poddyakov, L.A. Paramonova, O.A. Christ and others). And this is the second feature of children's creativity.

For an adult, the beginning of solving a problem (recognizing it, searching for approaches) is the most difficult and painful, sometimes leading to despair. A child, unlike an adult, does not experience such difficulties (unless, of course, he is subject to the strict demands of adults). He easily and, above all, practically begins indicative, sometimes not even entirely meaningful, activities, which, gradually becoming more purposeful, captivate the child with the search and often lead to positive results (N.N. Poddyakov, L.A. Paramonova, G.V. Uradovskikh). And even in a child’s musical creativity there is a simultaneity of composing and performing (K.V. Tarasova). And this is the third feature of children's creativity, certainly related to the first two and especially to the second.

It is also essential to understand that the development of creativity in children is associated with purposeful learning, focused on the child’s “zone of proximal development” (L.S. Vygotsky).

Thus, artistic imagination is the main component of children’s imaginative thinking in appliqué classes. Artistic and imaginative development must be developed in preschool age with specially organized training. Artistic and imaginative thinking must be developed in preschool age. Personal results are reflected in the individual qualitative properties of preschoolers, which they must acquire in the process of mastering an educational lesson, formation aesthetic feelings, artistic and creative thinking, observation and imagination; the ability to cooperate with comrades in the process of joint activities, to correlate one’s part of the work with the general plan.

MOSCOW DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

State budget educational institution

higher professional education in Moscow

MOSCOW CITY

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Educational Psychology

COURSE WORK

Development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool age

Direction 050400.62 Psychological and pedagogical education

Profile Psychology and pedagogy of preschool education

Head Zinchenko E.A.

Student Sukhova T.A. 4th group, 1st year

Moscow, 2014

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1. General characteristics of the development of thinking in children of senior preschool age

1Theoretical foundations of visual-figurative thinking

1.2Psychological and pedagogical characteristics of senior preschool age

3Visual-figurative thinking is the basis of cognitive activity of older preschoolers

Chapter 1 Conclusions

Chapter 2. Features of the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool children

1Stages of development of visual-figurative thinking in older preschoolers

2.2Conditions for the development of visual-figurative thinking in children

Conclusions for Chapter 2

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

Currently, the problem of mental education of preschool children is of particular relevance. For a number of years, the main efforts of Soviet scientists studying the cognitive processes of preschool children were focused on studying two problems. One of them is the problem of the development of perception processes. The second problem is the problem of forming conceptual thinking. At the same time, the problem of developing visual-figurative thinking in preschoolers has been much less developed. Important materials on this issue are contained in the works of A.V. Zaporozhets, A.A. Lyublinskaya, G.I. Minskoy and others.

However, the main features of the formation and functioning of visual-figurative thinking have not yet been sufficiently studied. At present, it is indisputable that visual-effective and visual-figurative thinking are important in the mental development of preschool children. The development of these forms of thinking largely determines the success of the transition to more complex, conceptual forms of thinking. In this regard, in modern psychological research, a significant place is occupied by the study of the basic functions of these more elementary forms, the determination of their role in the general process of the child’s mental development. A number of studies have shown that the potential of these forms of thinking is extremely great and is not yet fully used.

With age, the content of preschoolers’ thinking changes significantly, their relationships with people around them become more complicated, play activity develops, and various forms arise. productive activity, the implementation of which requires knowledge of new aspects and properties of objects. Such a change in the content of thinking also requires its more advanced forms, which provide the opportunity to transform the situation not only in terms of external material activity, but also in terms of what is represented.

A number of studies (B.G. Ananyev, O.I. Galkina, L.L. Gurova, A.A. Lyublinskaya, I.S. Yakimanskaya, etc.) convincingly show the important role of imaginative thinking when performing various kinds activities, solving both practical and cognitive problems. Were allocated Various types images and their function in the implementation of mental processes has been studied.

The problem of figurative thinking was intensively developed by a number of foreign scientists (R. Arnheim, D. Brown, D. Hebb, G. Hein, R. Hold, etc.) A number of domestic studies reveal the structure of visual-figurative thinking and characterize some of the features of its functioning ( B.G. Ananyev, L.L. Gurova, V.P. Zinchenko, T.V. Kudryavtsev, F.N. Limyakin, I.S. Yakimanskaya, etc.).Many authors (A.V. Zaporozhets, A. .A. Lyublinskaya, J. Piaget, etc.) consider the emergence of visual-figurative thinking as a key moment in the mental development of a child. However, the conditions for the formation of visual thinking in preschoolers and the mechanisms for its implementation have not been fully studied. It should be noted that the ability to operate with ideas is not a direct result of the child’s acquisition of knowledge and skills.

Series analysis psychological research gives reason to believe that this ability arises in the process of interaction of various lines of psychological development of the child - the development of object and instrumental actions, speech, imitation, play activities, etc. Analysis of both domestic and foreign research shows that the development of visual-figurative thinking - this is a complex and lengthy process, a comprehensive and complete study of which requires a cycle of experimental and theoretical work.

The object of the study is the visual-figurative thinking of preschool children.

The subject of the study is the process of development of visual-figurative thinking in preschoolers

The purpose of the study is to identify the features of the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool children.

Research objectives:

Consider thinking as a mental process;

Conduct an analysis of available theoretical data and psychological and pedagogical literature.

Chapter I. General characteristics of the development of thinking in children of senior preschool age

1 Theoretical foundations of visual and figurative thinking

Thinking is the highest cognitive process. It represents the generation of new knowledge, an active form of creative reflection and transformation of reality1.

Thinking is the most generalized and indirect form of mental reflection, establishing connections and relationships between cognizable objects.

The difference between thinking and other mental processes is that it is almost always associated with the presence of a problem situation, a task that needs to be solved, and an active change in the conditions in which this task is given. Thinking, unlike perception, goes beyond the limits of sensory data and expands the boundaries of knowledge. In thinking based on sensory information, certain theoretical and practical conclusions are made. It reflects existence not only in the form of individual things, phenomena and their properties, but also determines the connections that exist between them, which most often are not given directly to man in his very perception. The properties of things and phenomena, the connections between them are reflected in thinking in a generalized form, in the form of laws and entities.

Thinking as a separate mental process does not exist; it is invisibly present in all other cognitive processes: perception, attention, imagination, memory, speech. Higher forms These processes are necessarily associated with thinking, and the degree of its participation in these cognitive processes determines their level of development.

In a number of studies B.G. Ananyeva, P.Ya. Galperina, A.V. Zaporozhets, V.P. Zinchenko, E.I. Ignatieva, S.L. Rubinshteina, I.S. Yakimanskaya convincingly shows the important role of thinking in performing various types of activities and solving both practical and cognitive problems.

Thinking is the movement of ideas that reveals the essence of things. Its result is not an image, but a certain thought, an idea. A specific result of thinking can be a concept - a generalized reflection of a class of objects in their most general and essential features.

A person can think with varying degrees of generality, relying more or less on perceptions, ideas or concepts in the thinking process. Depending on this, three main types of thinking are distinguished: objective-effective, visual-figurative and abstract.

Subject-specific thinking is a type of thinking associated with practical actions on objects. In its elementary form, objectively effective thinking is characteristic of young children, for whom thinking about objects means acting and manipulating with them.

Visual-figurative thinking is a type of thinking that is based on perception or ideas. Thoughts are visual and figurative, a person is tied to reality, and the images themselves necessary for thinking are presented in his short-term and operative memory. This form of thinking is most fully and comprehensively represented in children of preschool and primary school age.

Abstract thinking, which predominantly characterizes older schoolchildren and adults, is conceptual thinking, devoid of direct visualization, inherent in perception and ideas.

All listed species human thinking coexist and can be represented in the same activity. However, depending on its nature and ultimate goals, one or another type of thinking dominates. For this reason they all differ. In terms of their degree of complexity, in terms of the demands they place on a person’s intellectual and other abilities, all of these types of thinking are not inferior to each other.

Interaction with a cognizable object (or its model) is an important condition for the thought process. Such interaction can occur both in terms of practical transformations and in terms of visual perception. In the process of the latter, an image of the perceived object appears and various types of transformations of this image are carried out.

V.P. Zinchenko notes: “...there is not only reproductive, but also productive perception, and in the visual system there are mechanisms that ensure the generation of a new image.”

One of the types of visual-figurative thinking is visual.

“Visual thinking is a human activity, the product of which is the generation of new images, the creation of new visual forms that carry a certain semantic load and make meaning visible. These images are distinguished by their autonomy and freedom in relation to the objects of perception.”

In research on visual thinking, a methodological approach has been developed that has made it possible to obtain important data that perceptual, identification and mnemonic actions are involved not only in the information preparation of a mental act, but also in its implementation. These materials provide an opportunity to take a fresh look at the formation of imaginative thinking in preschool children.

One of the main objectives of our study of visual-figurative thinking in preschool children was to study the conditions for its occurrence, as well as to identify its role in the general process of mental development of children. This form of thinking is not only a prerequisite for conceptual thinking, but also performs specific functions that cannot be performed by other forms of thinking.

Various forms of a child’s thinking (visual-effective, visual-figurative and conceptual) never function in isolation from each other. Thus, in conceptual thinking there are always figurative components; in the process of figurative thinking, concepts or related formations play a significant role. Therefore, when we talk about the figurative or conceptual thinking of children, this is to a certain extent an abstraction. In fact, the child’s thinking acquires one or another character depending on the predominance of one or another of its components (figurative or conceptual). When solving certain classes of problems, operating with images comes to the fore, and the entire thinking process acquires specific features that distinguish it from conceptual thinking.

Visual-figurative thinking is essential not only for a child, but also for the successful implementation of many types of professional activities of adults - designers, operators, etc.

Within certain limits, visual-figurative thinking is characterized by special patterns of functioning and allows one to cognize aspects and properties of objects that are actually inaccessible to conceptual thinking; it would be more accurate to say this - available, but only in close connection with imaginative thinking. One of the features of the latter is that in its process objects are represented in our consciousness differently than in conceptual thinking. This determines the peculiarities of operating with the content reflected in the human consciousness.

In conceptual thinking, movement around an object is carried out in the logic of operating concepts, where the main role is played by various kinds of judgments, inferences, etc. Here there is a strict regulation of the process by the structure of individual concepts and their interrelations. Reality is reflected in concepts; a number of significant connections and relationships are highlighted in it, but some of the features are omitted, which is a necessary result of abstraction. These omitted features cannot be filled in with logical operations. It is necessary to return to reality itself and implement new forms of its transformation, during which new images and new concepts are formed.

In the process of visual-figurative thinking, the diversity of aspects of the subject is more fully reproduced, which appear not in logical, but in factual connections. And in this aspect, visual-figurative thinking approaches thinking “in complexes”, studied by L. S. Vygotsky. The ability to present an object with all the particular and, in a given system of analysis, secondary features can serve as the basis for rethinking the entire problem situation. These secondary properties can become the beginning of a line of analysis that will allow you to see the object in a new plane, in a different system of connections, where these secondary properties and connections will appear as essential.

Another important feature of visual-figurative thinking is the ability to display in a sensory form the movement and interaction of several objects at once. There is reason to believe that it is this feature that underlies the figurative cognition of basic kinematic dependencies by preschool children - the dependence of the distance traveled on the speed and time of movement, the dependence of movement time on the speed of the distance, etc.

V.P. Zinchenko, analyzing the specifics of visual imagery (visual thinking), notes: “the main advantage of the visual image (as well as the visualized image) is the breadth of coverage of the displayed situation.”

L.L. Gurova notes that visual-figurative thinking has its own logic, which cannot be considered as a primitive replenishment of undeveloped logic. Figurative logic is heuristic in nature, often leading to intuitive decisions.

2 Psychological and pedagogical characteristics of senior preschool age

Senior preschool age is designated in psychology as the age of formation psychological readiness to school education and the formation of its prerequisites. This period is characterized by a crisis of 6-7 years, described in the works of L.S. Vygotsky, L.I. Bozhovich, A.V. Zaporozhets.

So, L.S. Vygotsky noted that the older preschooler is characterized by mannerisms, capriciousness, fidgetiness, and clowning. He begins to act like a buffoon, speaks “in a voice that is not his own,” grimaces, and in general he is characterized by a general lack of motivation in behavior, stubbornness, and negativism.

Analyzing these manifestations, the scientist explained them by the loss of childish spontaneity, involuntary behavior, which disappears as a result of the beginning differentiation of external and internal life. Another distinctive feature of this critical period L.S. Vygotsky believed in the emergence of a meaningful orientation in his own experiences: the child suddenly discovers the fact of the presence of his own experiences, discovers that they belong to him and only him, and the experiences themselves acquire meaning for him. This is due to the emergence of a specific new formation - a generalization of experience (intellectualization of affect): the world, as such, around the child is still the same, but the child’s attitude towards it changes.

L.I. Bozhovich argues that the crisis of 6-7 years is associated with the emergence of a new, core systemic neoplasm for the child’s personality - an “internal position” that expresses new level self-awareness and reflection of the child. Until the age of 6-7 years, a child almost does not think about his place in life, purpose and does not strive to change it; but in older preschool age, in connection with his general progress in mental and intellectual development, a clearly expressed desire appears to take a new, “more adult” position in life and fulfill a new one, important not only for himself, but also for the people around him activity. In other words, a child of this age becomes aware of his social “I.” It was at this time that “back to school” games and imitation of adults’ “work” appeared.

The uniqueness of the social formation of the psyche of an older preschooler lies in the fact that its development is mediated by the leading, dominant mental form at that time - ideas.

Almost all researchers of this period of child development emphasize that it is essential for him to have a calm emotionality, devoid of affective outbursts and conflicts. This special character of the course emotional life children is closely related to the emergence of their ideas.

S.L. Rubinstein, P.Ya. Galperin, N.N. Poddyakov and other psychologists note that children’s ideas are fragmentary, unstable, and diffuse. However, in the preschool period there is a process of their intensive development in various types of play and productive activities.

Development of various types of children's activities, such as construction, visual activity, as well as the complication of educational tasks in the classroom, create the need to form in older preschoolers quite accurate, stable and arbitrarily updated ideas about the external properties of objects. Developing ideas leave an imprint on the entire process of mental development. Therefore, such forms of the psyche and components of psychophysiological functions as imagination, figurative memory and remembering specific words.

Numerous studies by domestic psychologists E.F. Rybalko, A.V. Skripenko, S.A. Lukomskaya, E.I. Stepanova, L.A. Golovey, N.A. Grishchenko, L.N. Kuleshova, L.A. Wenger point to complex nature development of cognitive processes in older preschool age.

The process of development of children's perception in preschool age was studied in detail by L.A. Wenger and described as follows. In older preschool age, under the influence of productive, design and artistic activity The child develops complex types of perceptual, analytical and synthetic activity, in particular the ability to mentally dissect a visible object into parts and then combine them into a single whole. Perceptual images related to the shape of objects also acquire new content. In addition to the outline, the structure of objects, spatial features and relationships of its parts are also highlighted.

The child’s attention at the beginning of preschool age reflects his interests in relation to surrounding objects and the actions performed with them. The child is focused only until interest wanes. The appearance of a new object immediately causes a shift of attention to it. Therefore, children rarely do the same thing for a long time. During preschool age, due to the complication of children's activities and their progress in general mental development, attention becomes more focused and stable.

So, if younger preschoolers can play the same game for 30-50 minutes, then by the age of five or six years the duration of the game increases to one and a half hours. This is explained by the fact that the game reflects more complex actions and relationships between people and interest in it is maintained by the constant introduction of new situations. The stability of attention also increases when children look at pictures and listen to stories and fairy tales. Thus, the duration of looking at a picture approximately doubles by the end of preschool age; a six-year-old child is more aware of a picture than junior preschooler, highlights more interesting aspects and details in it.

But the main change in attention in older preschool age is that children for the first time begin to control their attention, consciously direct it to certain objects and phenomena, and stay on them, using certain methods for this. The origins of voluntary attention lie outside the child’s personality. This means that the development of involuntary attention itself does not lead to the emergence of voluntary attention. The latter is formed due to the fact that adults include the child in new types of activities and, using certain means, direct and organize his attention.

Similar age-related patterns are observed in the process of memory development. Memory in older preschool age is involuntary. The child remembers better what is of greatest interest to him, gives best experience. Thus, the volume of fixed material is largely determined emotional attitude to a given object or phenomenon.

Z.M. Istomina analyzed that in older preschool age there is a gradual transition from involuntary to voluntary memorization and reproduction of material. At the same time, in the corresponding processes, special perceptual actions are identified and begin to develop relatively independently, mediating mnemonic processes and aimed at better remembering, more fully and more accurately reproducing the material retained in memory. Compared with primary and middle preschool age, the relative role of involuntary memorization in six- to seven-year-old children decreases somewhat, but at the same time, the strength of memorization increases.

At older preschool age, the child is able to reproduce the impressions received after a sufficiently long period of time. A 5-7 year old child needs to develop all types of memory - figurative and verbal-logical, short-term, long-term and operational. However, the main emphasis should be on the development of arbitrariness of the processes of memorization and reproduction, since the development of these processes, as well as arbitrary forms of the psyche in general, is one of the most important prerequisites for children’s readiness to study at school.

According to a study by O. Tsyn, in children aged 5-6 years, imagination indicators are at the center of the structure of cognitive functions and various components of intelligence. In the development of preschoolers’ ideas, words and actions, practical analysis of objects in the surrounding world, are essential. Their accelerated development is facilitated by the general social context of raising a child. Being updated in close connection with knowledge functioning in the speech plane, these ideas were successfully used by children in the general course of their cognitive activity.

In older preschool age, the child’s speech becomes more connected and takes the form of dialogue. The situational nature of speech, characteristic of young children, here gives way to contextual speech, the understanding of which by the listener does not require correlation of the statement with the situation. In preschool age, the development of speech “to oneself” and internal speech is noted.

A number of studies have shown that in preschool age one of the important forms The child's internal activity is a plan of representations. He can anticipate future changes in the situation, visually imagine various transformations and changes in objects (A.V. Zaporozhets, A.A. Lyublinskaya, G.I. Minskaya).

This plan does not appear in the form of “pure ideas”. It is included in the elementary forms of the child’s conscious activity. The reality surrounding the child does not appear to him as a chaos of disparate phenomena. He already has a relatively simple, but still system of specific and generalized ideas about surrounding things, recorded and objectified in speech form. This system serves as the basis for a fairly broad orientation in the world around the child and allows one to correctly qualify perceived phenomena.

As Leontyev A.N noted, didactic games contribute to the development of cognitive activity, intellectual operations, which are the basis of learning. Didactic games are characterized by the presence of an educational task - a teaching task. Adults are guided by it when creating this or that didactic game, but they put it in a form that is entertaining for children. Here are examples of educational tasks: to teach children to distinguish and correctly name colors (“Salute”, “Colored rugs”) or geometric shapes (“Ice drift”), to clarify ideas about tableware (“Katya the doll is having lunch”) or clothing, to develop the ability to compare objects by external signs, location in space (What has changed”, paired pictures), to develop the eye and coordination of small movements (“Catch the Fish”, “Flying Caps”). The educational task is embodied by the creators of the game in appropriate content and is implemented through game actions that children perform.

What attracts a child to a game is not the educational task inherent in it, but the opportunity to be active, perform game actions, achieve results, and win. However, if a participant in the game does not master the knowledge and mental operations that are determined by the learning task, he will not be able to successfully perform game actions or achieve results.

Thus, active participation, especially winning in a didactic game, depends on how much the child has mastered the knowledge and skills that are dictated by her learning task. This encourages the child to be attentive, remember, compare, classify, and clarify his knowledge. This means that the didactic game will help him learn something in an easy, relaxed manner. This unintentional learning is called autodidactism.

The author of one of the first pedagogical systems of preschool education, F. Froebel, was convinced that the task of primary education was not learning, but organizing play. While remaining a game, it must be imbued with a lesson. Froebel developed a system of didactic games, which represents the basis of educational work with children in kindergarten. This system includes didactic games with different toys, materials (ball, cubes, spheres, cylinders), arranged strictly sequentially according to the principle of increasing complexity of learning tasks and game actions. An obligatory element of most didactic games were poems and songs rhymed by F. Froebel and his students in order to enhance the educational impact of the games.

Another worldwide known system didactic games, the author of which is M. Montessori. It is close to Froebel’s position: the game must be educational, otherwise it is an “empty game” that has no impact on the child.

The author of one of the first domestic pedagogical systems of preschool education E.I. Tikheyeva announced a new approach to didactic games. According to Tikheyeva, they are only one of the components of educational work with children, along with reading, conversation, drawing, singing, gymnastics, and labor. E. I. Tikheyeva directly considered the effectiveness of didactic games in raising and teaching children to be dependent on the extent to which they are in tune with the interests of the child, bring him joy, and allow him to show his activity and independence. Educational tasks involve the formation of mental operations (comparison, classification, generalization), improvement of speech (enrichment of vocabulary, description of objects, composing riddles), development of the ability to navigate distance, time, space. The content of didactic games was the surrounding life.

E.I. Tikheyeva has developed didactic materials, board and printed games, geometric mosaics, which are used in preschool institutions.

In Soviet pedagogy, a system of didactic games was created in the 60s. Its authors are famous teachers and psychologists: L.A. Wenger, A.P. Usova, V.N. Avanesova. Recently, the searches of scientists (Z.M. Boguslavskaya, O.M. Dyachenko, N.E. Veraksa, E.O. Smirnova) have been moving towards creating a series of games for full development children's intelligence, which are characterized by flexibility, initiative of thought processes, transfer of formed mental actions for new content. In such games there are no fixed rules; on the contrary, children are faced with the need to choose ways to solve a problem. IN preschool pedagogy A traditional division of didactic games has developed into games with objects, board-printed, and verbal.

A number of studies have shown that with age, the content of preschoolers’ thinking changes significantly - their relationships with people around them become more complicated, play activity develops, various forms of productive activity arise, the implementation of which requires knowledge of new aspects and properties of objects. Such a change in the content of thinking also requires its more advanced forms, which provide the opportunity to transform the situation not only in terms of external material activity, but also in the imaginable, ideal level. In the process of visually effective thinking, the prerequisites for more complex shape visual-figurative thinking, which is characterized by the fact that the solution of certain problems can be carried out by the child in terms of ideas, without the participation of practical actions.

3 Visual-figurative thinking is the basis of cognitive activity of an older preschooler

Thinking is a very complex holistic and at the same time concrete form mental activity. The thinking process is aimed at obtaining new information about an object and involves the use of only familiar methods of action.

The thinking of children of senior preschool age is figurative in nature. This thinking is specific in that it relies not on actions, but on ideas and images: when solving problems, a preschooler can imagine a situation and mentally act in it.

Research in the field of studying the visual-figurative thinking of preschoolers was carried out by J. Piaget, N.N. Poddyakov, L.I. Bozhovich, L.V. Zankov, D.B. Elkonin and dr. In preschool age, a child’s thinking is based on his ideas. The child may think that this moment he does not perceive, but what he knows from his past experience. Operating with images and ideas makes the preschooler’s thinking extra-situational, going beyond the perceived situation and significantly expanding the boundaries of cognition.

Analysis of children's ideas about surrounding objects and phenomena allows us to identify two different, but interconnected ways of forming these ideas.

The first way is the formation of ideas in the process of direct perception of objects, but without their practical transformation. On the basis of perceptual actions, children develop the ability to reproduce in their imagination various objects and phenomena that previously acted as objects of their perception.

The second way is the formation of children's ideas in the process of practical, transformative activities of the children themselves. Methods of practical transformation of objects learned with the help of an adult act as powerful tool knowledge of the surrounding world of things. Special meaning These methods are used to detect hidden, not directly perceived aspects, properties and connections of objects.

Thus, the plane of children’s ideas does not appear in “pure form”; it is included in the system of forms of social experience acquired by the child, fixed in speech form.

However, there are two different lines of research, which from different angles lead us to one basic conclusion that speech in one form or another takes part in this process. Research by A.N. Sokolova showed that in the process of visual-figurative thinking, hidden speech impulses arise. The results of these works indicate that visual-figurative thinking is in fact always associated with speech processes.

Another line of research leads us to the same conclusions, in which the peculiarities of the formation in preschoolers of the ability to operate with their ideas were studied. In the work of N.P. Sakulina showed that operating with images of objects is formed in children in the process special organization their cognitive activity.

Imaginative thinking includes three thought processes: creating an image, operating with it and orienting in space. All these three processes have a common basis, a foundation that does not depend on the type and content of human activity.

When studying various objects or their images, the child identifies certain relationships in them depending on which of the substructures of figurative thinking is dominant in him (main, predominant, more developed, used more often than others). In general, this type of thinking consists of five intersecting substructures.

According to the research of J. Piaget, the following substructures of figurative thinking are distinguished: topological, projective, ordinal, metric, compositional (algebraic).

With the help of the first substructure - topological - the child, first of all, isolates and more easily operates with such characteristics of objects as continuous-discontinuous, connected-incoherent, compact-non-compact, belongs-does not belong, establishes areas of inclusion and intersection of spatial figures. He, as it were, “fashions” in the representation the required image or the necessary visual transformations. Children operate with such characteristics as together, inside, outside, on a plane, intersect at the border, have (do not have) common points, the internal (external) part of objects, their union. Those who are dominated by this substructure do not like to rush. They carry out each action in great detail, trying not to miss a single link in it. They “walk” through various labyrinths with great pleasure and never get tired, consistently moving a pencil or other object along intricate intertwined lines, finding out who is calling whom, and with great pleasure solving other similar problems that require continuous coherent movement or transformation.

Those who have a dominant projective substructure - this dominant provides the ability to recognize, create, imagine, operate and navigate among visual objects or their graphic images from any point of reference, from different angles. It allows you to establish similarities between a spatial object or its model (real or symbolic) with their various projections (images).

A favorite activity for children with this dominant substructure is to view and study an object from different points of view, from different angles. They are happy to establish the correspondence of a certain thing to its image and, conversely, the image to the thing. Search and find various ways to use an object in practice, its everyday purpose and application possibilities - a big joy for them. Therefore, when looking at given drawings, it is these children who first of all notice a different angle, a projection of the image.

Comparison and evaluation in a general qualitative manner are preferred by those for whom the ordinal substructure is dominant. Based on it, the child manages to isolate properties, establish and classify relationships on various grounds: size (larger-smaller, longer-shorter), distance (closer-further, lower-higher), shape (round, rectangular, triangular), position in space (above-bottom, right-left, front-behind, parallel-perpendicular, behind, between, next to), the nature of movement (from left to right-right to left, from top to bottom-from bottom to top, forward-back), temporary spatial representations (first -then, before-after, earlier-later), etc. these children act logically, consistently, in order. Working on the algorithm for them - favorite hobby.

“Metrists” (children with a dominant metric substructure) focus their attention on quantitative characteristics and transformations. Main question for them - “how much?” what is the length, area, distance, magnitude in numerical terms. They take great pleasure in recalculating, determining specific numerical values ​​and measuring lengths, distances, extents, and distances.

Children with a dominant compositional (or algebraic) substructure constantly strive for all sorts of combinations and manipulations, isolating additional parts and assembling them into a single whole (single block), reducing (“collapsing”) and replacing several transformations with one, even without a direct need for this , quickly and easily switch from direct action to reverse action. These are the same “hurries” who do not want and with great difficulty force themselves to trace in detail, pronounce, explain all the steps of the solution or justify their own actions. These future (or present) Ostap Benders (“great schemers”) think and act quickly, but they often make mistakes.

From the described point of view (model), to form imaginative thinking in children means to form in them each of the indicated substructures in their unity and interconnections.

Possession of knowledge about the structure of figurative thinking makes it possible to explain and understand many seemingly paradoxical and not entirely clear situations. For example, why does one think slowly but correctly, while the other, although quickly, is often mistaken? It's all about the dominant substructure. The first in this case perceives the world and solves problems, isolating first of all topological relationships, and acts consistently, in detail, without missing the slightest detail. Therefore, his process takes a long time, but it is difficult for him to make mistakes. The second one, with a dominant compositional (algebraic) substructure, constantly “collapses” (reduces) its actions, skips, and skips entire pieces. Therefore, it is natural for him not to replace something, to miss something, but at the same time the process (due to numerous abbreviations) proceeds very quickly. It becomes clear why, of course, smart people sometimes behave extremely stupidly. After all, we evaluate the behavior and actions of another from our position, from our point of view, and cannot switch to the substructure of the other.

Taking into account these theoretical positions, it is easy to understand that it is not necessary, and indeed impossible, to always demand from children the unambiguous answer we expect. Indeed, depending on the dominant substructure of figurative thinking, various options are very often possible, sometimes not coinciding with the expected answer of the adult. How often children baffle adults with their unexpected answers. There is no need to suppress the child’s initiatives; children should think independently, in their own ways, inherent in their dominant substructures.

The visual and figurative reflection of the reality surrounding the child is in close connection with speech. Objects and phenomena, as well as their individual properties and connections, are cognized in figurative form and recorded in speech terms, i.e. there is a simultaneous reproduction of various objects in the minds of children with the help of figurative and speech means.

Here it is necessary to distinguish between the speech and conceptual aspects of children’s cognitive activity. Reflection in speech is no longer a figurative reflection, but also not a conceptual one. The meanings of words for a child undergo a long development process before they reach the conceptual level.

Children's ideas can only accompany the speech plan, playing the role of simple illustrations. However, in a number of cases, the actualization of ideas and their manipulation are carried out with the aim of deeper and more complete knowledge of the object.

The relationship between the figurative and verbal reflection of objects and phenomena is manifested in the particular actualization of their images. As a rule, when a person tries to directly imagine an object “head-on”, he does not succeed well. The simple name of this item is ineffective. However, the plane of ideas comes to life and begins to actively function in the course of reasoning about this subject - about its external features, its functional properties, etc. the ideas that arise in this case can have a noticeable reverse influence on the very course of reasoning.

Conclusions on chapter 1

Senior preschool age is considered the age of formation of readiness for schooling. At this age, further development of cognitive processes occurs. One of the most complex processes is thinking - an indirect, generalized reflection of reality. A person can think with varying degrees of generality, and in the process of thinking rely more or less on perceptions, ideas, and concepts. Depending on this, three main types of thinking are distinguished: objective-effective, visual-figurative, abstract. In children of senior preschool age, thinking is based on the plane of ideas; it is figurative in nature.

A number of studies have shown that in preschool age one of the important forms of a child’s internal activity is the plan of ideas. He can anticipate future changes in the situation, visually imagine various transformations and changes in objects.

In the process of visual-figurative thinking, the diversity of aspects of objects is more fully reproduced. Objects and phenomena, as well as their individual properties and connections, are cognized in figurative form and recorded in speech.

A child, informing an adult about his impressions and actions, objectifies in speech the results of his cognitive and practical activities. Receiving their assessment from an adult, the child himself learns to see and evaluate his actions as if from the outside, from socially developed positions.

With age, the content of preschoolers' thinking changes - their relationships with people around them become more complicated, play activity develops, and various forms of productive activity arise.

Didactic games contribute to the development of cognitive activity, intellectual operations, which are the basis of learning. Didactic games encourage children to be attentive, remember, compare, classify, and clarify their knowledge about the world around them.

CHAPTER II. FEATURES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF VISUAL-FIGURATORY THINKING IN SENIOR PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

1 Stages of development of visual-figurative thinking in older preschoolers

At preschool age, the transition from visual-effective to visual-figurative thinking occurs. According to P.N. Poddiakov, ideas are an important basis that largely determines the success of the formation of visual-figurative thinking in children. “The latter is characterized by the fact that children’s knowledge of various properties and connections of things occurs in the process of operating with images of these things. But before operating with an image, you must be able to actualize it.”

Poddyakov identified six stages of thinking development from junior to senior preschool age. These steps are as follows.

The child is not yet able to act in his mind, but is already capable of using his hands, manipulating things, to solve problems in a visually effective way, transforming the problem situation accordingly,

Speech is already included in the process of solving a problem by the child, but it is used by him only to name objects with which he manipulates in a visually effective way. Basically, the child still solves problems “with his hands and eyes,” although in verbal form he can already express and formulate the result of the practical action performed.

The problem is solved figuratively through the manipulation of object representations. Here, the ways of performing actions aimed at transforming the situation in order to find a solution to the problem are probably realized and can be verbally indicated. At the same time, differentiation occurs in the internal plan of the final (theoretical) and intermediate (practical) goals of action. An elementary form of reasoning aloud arises, not yet separated from the performance of a real practical action, but already aimed at theoretically clarifying the method of transforming the situation or the conditions of the task;

The child solves the problem according to a pre-compiled, thoughtful and internally presented plan. It is based on memory and experience accumulated in the process of previous attempts to solve similar problems.

The problem is solved in terms of actions in the mind, followed by the execution of the same task in a visually-effective plan in order to reinforce the answer found in the mind and then formulate it in words.

The solution to the problem is carried out only internally with the issuance of a ready-made verbal solution without subsequent return to real, practical actions with objects.

An important conclusion that was made by N.N. Poddyakov from studies of the development of children's thinking, is that in children the stages and achievements in improving mental actions and operations have not completely disappeared, but are transformed and replaced by new, more advanced ones. They are transformed into “structural levels of organization of the thinking process” and “act as functional stages in solving creative problems.”

When a new problem situation or task arises, all these levels can again be included in the search for the process of solving it as relatively independent and at the same time as components of the logical links of the holistic process of searching for its solution. In other words, children's intelligence already at this age functions on the basis of the principle of systematicity. It presents and, if necessary, simultaneously includes in the work all types and levels of thinking: visual-effective, visual-figurative and verbal-logical.

It is known that thinking (visual and effective) begins to actively develop in children at the age of three. During the same period, the first substructure appeared - topological. It is at this time that the child begins to distinguish such topological characteristics as closed and open figures. For example, if you ask a child to divide drawn objects into two groups, then in one group he puts squares, triangles, circles, cubes and balls - closed figures, and in the other - open figures (spirals, horseshoes).

The projective substructure appears next in the child’s figurative thinking. This is easy to detect if, for example, you invite children to fence off the house with posts. Children under four years old lay out the fence along a continuous, wavy path, without worrying about its shape (as long as it is topologically continuous). After four years they are already building a straight fence. Therefore, it becomes clear that it is premature to offer three-year-olds to assemble a pyramid according to the proposed scheme, which requires some kind of program. This task presupposes that children have a projective substructure, which they do not yet have at this age. This fact is confirmed by the observations of I.Ya. Kaplunovich over the actions of children in the classroom.

The third in the discussed sequence appears the ordinal substructure. It is the basis of the “principle of conservation” during various transformations of lengths, volumes, etc., which appears in children after five years. Until the child has mastered the ordinal substructure and the principle of conservation (he has not begun to realize, for example, that after pouring from a narrow vessel into a wide one, there is no less liquid, although the height of the column has noticeably decreased), he has to form measurement (quantitative) relationships, skills bills are useless.

Only after mastering ordinal relations in a child can and should move on to the formation of a metric, and then a compositional (algebraic) substructure.

The presented theoretical ideas about the stages of development of imaginative thinking in preschool children allow us to make next output The topological substructure is the basis, the foundation for the development of subsequent substructures of figurative thinking in children, the initial “cell” for its formation. Experimental research and practice of preschool education show that at a low level of development, the further formation of other substructures (projective, ordinal, etc.) is extremely difficult. If we begin training with the formation of a topological substructure and topological concepts in children, then further progress in mastering the content and intellectual development is noticeably easier.

Moreover, within the framework of the formative experiment, the following feature was discovered. When identifying difficulties in mastering educational material and understanding it, it is more effective not only to correct and “remove” the intellectual difficulties found in a child, but rather to make efforts aimed at significantly increasing the level of development of the topological substructure. In other words, if a teacher has discovered intellectual difficulties in a child, then it makes sense to once again present the same material and content to him, but focusing specifically on topological relationships. Therefore, it becomes clear that without forming this substructure, you cannot move on to working with the next ones.

The presence of a topological substructure in a child’s figurative thinking contributes to the formation of other substructures and facilitates the further development of intellectual abilities. She is responsible for children’s ability to analyze, substantiate their conclusions, reason, and draw conclusions. Thanks to it, children acquire the ability to act step by step, sequentially, continuously, when one judgment naturally follows from another in a chain of mental transformations.

Having achieved that children are able to freely isolate and operate with topological concepts and relationships, in the middle group of a preschool institution one should begin to form a projective substructure for the four-year-olds. Further, at the age of five (the older group), children must master the first ordinal relations. Through this activity they develop the following corresponding substructure. And only by the end of the year in the senior group does it make sense to master and operate metric relations. Working with counting operations in more early age does not allow children to make quantitative transformations with numbers and quantities consciously. IN best case scenario they can remember quantitative characteristics, develop mechanical skills and perform some arithmetic operations on numbers, without understanding the meaning or essence of the transformations being performed. Awareness is impossible, if only due to the absence of the famous phenomenon of J. Piaget - the principle of conservation of quantity. Therefore, it is advisable to study the natural series of numbers earlier than in the second half of the senior group.

The presence of dominant substructures in figurative thinking must be taken into account in the process of cognitive activity of children of senior preschool age. So, for example, in order to learn a new song, it is very important for a “topologist” to understand, comprehend both the text and the music, and somehow connect them.

It will be difficult for a child inclined to order if he does not have the opportunity to imagine, dance, or depict the situation described in the song (for example, a clubfooted bear or a trembling hare). The “orderist” must first of all establish the sequence, the order of actions in the content of the song, the patterns of the sound of instruments, the alternation of low and high, quiet and loud sounds, slow and fast rhythms. The “metrist” most likely will not start “working” on a piece of music and will not experience it until he hears or counts, for example, how many times a particular note is repeated in a piece of music, how many instruments are available or used , how many children sing, etc. It is very difficult for children with a compositional dominant to repeat and reproduce a song several times. They often begin to go out of tune not because of a lack of hearing, but due to the constant desire to construct a new one (rhythm, they try to build a second or third voice, without even suspecting the existence of such). Considering these individual characteristics children, the teacher manages to significantly facilitate the learning process for them.

And finally, in preparatory group With six-year-old children, you can actively engage in the development of compositional relationships and, accordingly, the formation of a compositional substructure.

The formation in preschool children of the main substructures of imaginative thinking in the specified sequence gives them the opportunity to consciously and deeply understand the world around them and its patterns. This is explained by the fact that the described path corresponds to the psychological nature of the child’s intellectual development and prepares him to overcome various difficulties and problems that he will encounter in the future.

The presence of all five of these substructures in children's thinking is the most important indicator of their intellectual readiness for school. In addition, it shows that after this, children are well oriented in all types of spatial relationships that are adequate to the corresponding substructures (for example, they absolutely clearly distinguish between right and left). They exhibit some manifestations of conscious components of theoretical thinking, which traditionally appear for the first time with good effective teaching only at primary school age (for example, the action of planning). The proposed approach clearly implements the well-known position of D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov that “in logical and psychological terms, the content of educational material should be given to children in the form of structures of their activity.”

To develop the topological substructure, games and tasks such as “Labyrinth” and “Choose the Right Path” are used. In addition to games, it is good to use attributes that are interesting for children (for example, toys from Kinder Surprises, models), since a preschool child will be very happy to move a car or a doll across paper not with a pencil or finger.

To develop the projective substructure, it makes sense to use various schematic images, for example, a floor plan for finding a hidden object, a map-type diagram for choosing the right road, the location of an object.

This kind of task very well develops initiative, independence and imagination of children. They allow preschoolers to engage in meaningful activity, discover new properties of objects, notice their similarities and differences, learn to see its different sides in each object, starting from a separate feature of the object, and build its image as a whole. For these purposes, by the end of this age period it is quite possible and necessary to offer children tasks for planning their own activities.

For the formation of an ordinal substructure of figurative thinking, various tasks for the development of observation are very effective.

Tasks for the development of the metrical substructure of figurative thinking in children usually do not cause any difficulties. All of them are associated with operating and orientation in quantitative relations. Therefore, these should include teaching children to count, various tasks and examples like: “Where are there more objects and why?” etc.

The development of the compositional substructure is facilitated by various games with cubes and construction sets. In addition, the development of this component of figurative thinking is facilitated by tasks to combine objects or concepts, comparison of two objects, two phenomena, two concepts.

All these games and tasks contribute to the development of children’s independent creative thinking and the formation of their intellectual readiness for learning at school.

2 Conditions for the development of visual-figurative thinking in older preschool age

thinking child preschool

The main condition for the development of thinking in a child is the position of an adult, which has in every age period its specificity.

The scope of problems that the child solves expands due to knowledge gained from an adult or in his own activities and observations. Therefore, the acquisition of knowledge is not an end in itself of mental education, but its means and at the same time a condition for the development of thinking. The child analyzes his experience, establishes analogies between the familiar and the unfamiliar, which leads him to unique conclusions.

It is the adult’s speech that guides the child’s thinking, gives it generality, purposefulness, problematic nature, some organization, planning and criticality. The development and organization of a child’s perception leads to the formation of his first mental operations - discrimination and comparison. It is necessary to provide the baby with a certain independence so that he can actively act with objects.

An adult teaches a child to see and formulate a problem in speech - to pose a question, and also to reflect in it the results of knowledge, although the child is not yet solving actual intellectual problems, but only practical ones.

In preschool age, in the context of extra-situational-cognitive communication with adults, a special kind of “theoretical” activity arises. Numerous children's questions arise regarding various areas of activity. The attitude of an adult to children's issues largely determines the further development of thinking. When answering them, it is necessary to provide the child with the opportunity, with the help of an adult, peers, or independently, to find the required answer, and not rush to give knowledge in a ready-made form. The main thing is to teach a preschooler to think, reason, and make attempts to resolve issues that arise. This position of an adult forms independent thinking and an inquisitive mind. Reliability, certainty and laconicity of answers, but at the same time their exhaustive nature, confirmed by examples and observations, contributes to the further development of curiosity in preschoolers.

An indifferent attitude to questions reduces the cognitive activity of a preschooler. You should not only treat children’s questions carefully, respectfully and tactfully, but also encourage children to ask.

It is necessary to teach the child to compare, generalize, analyze, organizing observations, experimentation, and familiarization with fiction. When a preschooler is encouraged to explain in detail, in detail, phenomena and processes in nature and social life, then reasoning turns into a way of cognition and solving intellectual problems. And here it is important for an adult to show tolerance and understanding of the unusual explanations that a preschooler gives, in every possible way supporting his desire to penetrate into the essence of objects and phenomena, to establish causality. investigative connections, find out hidden properties.

We emphasize that the development of coherent speech in a child contributes to the development of thinking, giving it a generalized and conscious character. If you do not teach a child to establish connections, then he will remain at the level of sensory perceived facts for a long time.

Not only mastering ways of thinking, but also mastering a system of knowledge allows a preschooler to more effectively solve intellectual problems. The principles of selection of such knowledge and their content have been studied in detail in preschool pedagogy. Let us only emphasize that assimilation should be considered not as an end in itself, but as a means of developing thinking. Mechanical memorization of various information, fragmentary and chaotic, copying adult reasoning does not do anything for the development of a preschooler’s thinking. V.A. Sukhomlinsky wrote: “...Do not bring down an avalanche of knowledge on a child... - inquisitiveness and curiosity can be buried under an avalanche of knowledge. Know how to open one thing to the child in the world around him, but open it in such a way that a piece of life will sparkle in front of the children with all the colors of the rainbow. Always leave something unsaid so that the child will want to return again and again to what he has learned.”

Cognitive activity characterized by the fact that the solution to a specific cognitive problem represents the formulation of the next, perhaps more general, task, and its solution, in turn, leads to the formulation of another problem, etc. A person’s cognitive activity determines his self-development.

To create in children positive attitude It is recommended to apply a “strategy for creating success” to cognitive activity. It is necessary to take into account the child’s preferences for one or another content of learning and accustom him to mental work on the educational material that is interesting to him, one should select those tasks that the child can objectively perform well, this will increase his self-esteem (one should give feasible tasks and help in necessary cases), will improve mood, increase readiness to participate in educational work, which contributes to the formation of a positive attitude towards learning. The content of educational material should be interesting, emotional, and use various forms of collective activity. In a word, encourage the child, his slightest success. It should be qualitative analysis, emphasizing all the positive aspects, as well as responding adequately to mistakes, counting them normal occurrence- learn from mistakes.

V.A. Sukhomlinsky wrote that positive emotions associated with the experience of success are the child’s faith in himself18.

The discovery of a new world of serious human activity stimulates in the child an active desire to participate in this life. In this regard, the life of a preschool child is characterized, firstly, by the relative separation of his activities from adults, secondly, by the expansion of living conditions, thirdly, by the discovery of the social functions of people and their relationships to each other, and fourthly by the active desire of the child participate in the lives of adults.

Figurative thinking also develops most clearly when perceiving fairy tales, stories, etc. brightness of ideas, liveliness, spontaneity, the possibility of emotional assistance and empathy with the hero of a literary work, but not in terms of real participation in his activities, but in terms of ideas. All this helps the development of visual and imaginative thinking.

Conclusions on Chapter 2

Thus, visual-figurative thinking is the main type of thinking of an older preschooler and is important for a wide variety of human activities. Ideas are an important basis that largely determines the success of the formation of visual and figurative thinking in children.

Visual-figurative thinking consists of five intersecting substructures: topological, projective, ordinal, metric, compositional (algebraic). The presence of dominant substructures in figurative thinking must be taken into account in the process of cognitive activity of children of senior preschool age. The formation of substructures gives older preschoolers the opportunity to consciously and deeply understand the world around them and its patterns.

Dominant substructures in figurative thinking must be taken into account in the learning process, since they give rise to individual ways of children’s activities. The presence of all five of these substructures in children's thinking is the most important indicator of their intellectual readiness for school.

Games and tasks aimed at developing substructures contribute to the development of children’s independent imaginative thinking and the formation of readiness for school learning.

The main condition for the development of thinking in a child is the guidance of an adult. The scope of problems that the child solves expands due to knowledge gained from an adult or in his own activities and observations.

As a result of cognitive communication with an adult, numerous children’s questions arise that relate to various areas of activity. The attitude of an adult to children's issues largely determines the further development of thinking.

Children need calm emotionality. Imaginative thinking develops most clearly when perceiving fiction (the child’s emotional assistance and empathy with the literary hero), as well as with the help of games, exercises, and assignments.

All this helps the development of visual-figurative thinking. The world of adults opens up before the child, which makes him want to participate in the lives of adults.

CONCLUSION

Thinking is the highest cognitive process. The difference between thinking and other cognitive processes is that it is almost always associated with the presence of a problem situation, a task that needs to be solved, and an active change in the conditions in which this task is given.

Thinking as a separate mental process does not exist; it is present in all other cognitive processes: perception, memory, attention, imagination, speech.

At the age of four to seven years, according to J. Piaget, there is a gradual conceptualization of mental activity, which leads the preschool child to pre-operational thinking. The thinking of a preschooler remains largely visual, including elements of mental abstract operations, which can be considered as a progressive change compared to the previous early age.

An analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature showed that the problem of developing visual-figurative thinking in preschoolers was dealt with by A.V. Zaporozhets, A.A. Lyublinskaya, G.I. Minskaya, I.S. Yakimanskaya, L.L. Gurova, B.G. Ananyev, J. Piaget, D. Hebb, D. Brown, R. Holt and others.

Both domestic and foreign studies show that the development of visual-figurative thinking is a complex and lengthy process. Analyzing the views of representatives of various approaches and schools regarding the dynamics of thinking in preschool age, we note significant age-related changes in this most important system function, which ensures the child’s adaptation to the conditions of life in the subject and social environment. The main change in the thinking process in preschool age is the transition from external action to the internal plane, which ensures by the end of preschool childhood the ability to act in the mind.

Many authors consider the emergence of visual-figurative thinking as a key moment in the mental development of a child. However, the conditions for the formation of visual-figurative thinking in preschoolers and the mechanisms for its implementation have not been fully studied.

Research by scientists and the results of an experimental study of visual-figurative thinking in preschool children allowed us to identify the following features of the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool age:

Visual-figurative thinking is the main type of thinking of a preschool child. Already in middle preschool age, children can master many capabilities associated with this type of thinking (mentally transform images of real objects, build visual models, plan their actions in the mind);

the emergence of visual-figurative thinking is a key moment in the mental development of a child;

the ability to operate with ideas arises in the process of interaction between various lines of a child’s psychological development - the development of objective and instrumental actions, speech, imitation, play activities, etc.

the initial stages of the development of visual-figurative thinking are closely adjacent to the development of perception processes;

tasks in which connections essential to achieving a goal can be discovered without testing are usually solved by children of older preschool age in their heads, and then carry out an error-free practical action;

the success of the transition from an external to an internal plan of action in preschool children is determined by the level of orientation-research activity aimed at identifying the significant connections of the situation.

Based on the results obtained, we have developed recommendations for parents and educators on the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschoolers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

.Allahverdov V.M., Bogdanova S.I., etc. Psychology: textbook. - M.: TK Welby, Prospekt publishing house, 2004 - 752 p.

2.Vallon A. Mental development of the child. - M.: Education, 1967

.Wecker, L.M. Psyche and reality. Unified theory of mental processes. - M.: Smysl, 1998 - 685 p.

.Wenger L.A. Development of cognitive abilities in the process of preschool education / Edited by L. A. Wenger. - M.: “Pedagogy”, 1986. - 225 p.

.Wenger L.A., Kholmovskaya V.V., Dyachenko O.M. and others. Diagnostics of mental development of preschool children - M.: Pedagogika, 1978 - 248 p.

.Vygotsky L.S. Thinking and speech / Ed.G.N. Shelogurova. - 5th ed., revised - M.: Labyrinth, 1999

.Vygotsky, L.S. Psychology / L.S. Vygotsky. - M.: APRIL PRESS EKSMO PRESS, 2002. - 1008 p.

.Galperin P. Ya., Elkonin D. B. On the analysis of J. Piaget’s theory on the development of children’s thinking. - In the book: J. Flavell. Genetic psychology of Jean Piaget/Trans. from English M., 1967. - 621 p.

.Zaporozhets A.V. Selected psychological works, in 2 volumes. Volume 1. Mental development of the child / Under. ed. V. V. Davydova, V. P. Zinchenko. - M.: Pedagogy, 1986. - 320 p.

10. Kravtsova E.E. Psychological neoplasms of preschool age<#"justify">Elkonin D. B. Mental development in childhood: Selected psychological works. // Edited by D. I. Feldshtein. - M.: Institute of Practical Psychology, 199

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Anastasia Kondratieva
Thinking: forms, properties, types, methods of development in children

Thinking- the process of indirect and generalized cognition (reflection) of the surrounding world. Its essence lies in the reflection of: 1) general and essential properties of objects and phenomena, including properties that are not directly perceived; 2) significant relationships and natural connections between objects and phenomena.

Basic forms of thinking

There are three main forms of thinking: concept, judgment and inference.

A concept is a form of thinking that reflects the general and, moreover, essential properties of objects and phenomena.

Every object, every phenomenon has many different properties and characteristics. These properties, signs can be divided into two categories - essential and non-essential.

Judgments reflect connections and relationships between objects and phenomena of the surrounding world and their properties and characteristics. Judgment is a form of thinking that contains the affirmation or denial of any position regarding objects, phenomena or their properties.

Inference is a form of thinking in which a person, comparing and analyzing various judgments, derives a new judgment from them. A typical example of inference is the proof of geometric theorems.

Properties of thinking

The main properties of human thinking are its abstraction and generalization. Abstract thinking consists in the fact that, thinking about any objects and phenomena, establishing connections between them, we highlight only those properties and signs that are important for solving the issue facing us, abstracting from all other signs, in this case us not interested: while listening to the teacher’s explanation in class, the student tries to understand the content of the explanation, highlight the main ideas, and connect them with each other and with his past knowledge. At the same time, he is distracted from the sound of the teacher’s voice and the style of his speech.

Abstract thinking is also closely related to its generality. By highlighting the most important aspects, connections and relationships that are significant from one point of view or another, we thereby focus our thoughts on that common thing that characterizes entire groups of objects and phenomena. Each object, each event, phenomenon, taken as a whole, is unique, as it has many different aspects and characteristics.

Types of thinking

In psychology, the following simplest and somewhat conventional classification of types of thinking is common: 1) visual-effective, 2) visual-figurative and 3) abstract (theoretical) thinking. Thinking is also distinguished between intuitive and analytical, theoretical, empirical, autistic and mythological.

Visual-effective thinking.

In the course of historical development, people solved the problems facing them first in terms of practical activity, only then did theoretical activity emerge from it. Practical and theoretical activities are inextricably interconnected.

Only as practical activity develops does it emerge as a relatively independent theoretical mental activity.

Not only in historical development humanity, but also in the process of mental development of each child, the starting point will be not purely theoretical, but practical activity. It is within this latter that children's thinking first develops. In pre-preschool age (up to three years inclusive), thinking is mainly visual and effective. The child analyzes and synthesizes cognizable objects as he, with his hands, practically separates, dismembers and reunites, correlates, connects with each other certain objects perceived at the moment. Curious children often break their toys precisely in order to find out “what’s inside.”

Visual-figurative thinking.

In its simplest form, visual-figurative thinking occurs mainly in preschool children, i.e., at the age of four to seven years. Although the connection between thinking and practical actions is preserved, it is not as close, direct and immediate as before. During the analysis and synthesis of a cognizable object, a child does not necessarily and does not always have to touch the object that interests him with his hands. In many cases, systematic practical manipulation (action) with an object is not required, but in all cases it is necessary to clearly perceive and visually represent this object. In other words, preschoolers think only in visual images and do not yet master concepts (in the strict sense).

Abstract thinking.

On the basis of practical and visual-sensory experience, children of school age develop, first in the simplest forms, abstract thinking, that is, thinking in the form of abstract concepts.

Mastering concepts as schoolchildren learn the fundamentals of various sciences - mathematics, physics, history - is of great importance in the mental development of children. The formation and assimilation of mathematical, geographical, physical, biological and many other concepts during school education are the subject of numerous studies. The development of abstract thinking in schoolchildren during the assimilation of concepts does not at all mean that their visual-effective and visual-figurative thinking now ceases to develop or disappears altogether. On the contrary, these primary and original forms of all mental activity continue to change and improve, developing together with abstract thinking and under its influence.

Intuitive and analytical thinking.

Analytical thinking is characterized by the fact that its individual stages are clearly expressed and the thinker can tell another person about them. Analytically thinking man is fully aware of both the content of his thoughts and the operations that comprise them. Analytical thinking in its extreme form takes the form of careful deductive inference.

Intuitive thinking is characterized by the fact that it lacks clearly defined stages. It is usually based on a compressed perception of the entire problem at once. The person in this case arrives at an answer, which may be right or wrong, with little or no awareness of the process by which he arrived at that answer. Therefore, the conclusions of intuitive thinking need to be verified by analytical means.

Intuitive and analytical thinking complement each other. Through intuitive thinking, a person can often solve problems that he would not have solved at all or, at best, would have solved more slowly through analytical thinking.

Theoretical thinking.

Theoretical thinking is thinking that does not lead directly to practical action. Theoretical thinking is contrasted with practical thinking, the conclusion of which is, as Aristotle put it, action. Theoretical thinking is guided by a special attitude and is always associated with the creation of a specific “theoretical world” and drawing a fairly clear boundary between it and the real world.

Empirical thinking.

It can be distinguished by at least, three vital functions of empirical thinking.

Firstly, empirical thinking provides a person with an awareness of similarities and differences. The most important task thinking when faced with an infinite variety of sensory-given properties and relationships of things lies in their separation, in focusing on what is similar and different, in highlighting a general idea of ​​​​objects.

Secondly, empirical thinking allows the subject to determine the measure of similarity and difference. Depending on practical and everyday tasks, a person can define the same objects, phenomena, situations as more or less similar and different.

Thirdly, empirical thinking makes it possible to group objects according to generic relations and classify them.

Ways to develop thinking

Development of visually effective thinking in children.

By the age of 5-6 years, children learn to perform actions in their minds. The objects of manipulation are no longer real objects, but their images. Most often, children present a visual, visual image of an object. Therefore, a child’s thinking is called visual-effective.

To develop visual and effective thinking, the following techniques should be used when working with children:

1) Learning to analyze a visual image (an adult can draw the child’s attention to individual elements of objects, ask questions about similarities and differences).

2) Learn to identify the properties of objects (children do not immediately understand that different objects can have similar properties; for example: “Name 2 objects that have three characteristics at once: white, soft, edible”).

3) Learning to recognize an object by a description of possible actions with it (for example, riddles).

4) Learning to find alternative methods of action (for example, “What to do if you need to know the weather outside?”).

5) Learning to compose narrative stories.

6) Learning to make logical conclusions (for example, “Petya is older than Masha, and Masha is older than Kolya. Who is the oldest?”).

Development of logical thinking in children.

To develop logical thinking in preschool children, the following techniques are used:

1) Teaching the child to compare objects (for example, “Find 10 differences in the following pictures”).

2) Teaching a child to classify objects (for example, the game “What’s extra?”).

3) Teaching a child to search for identical properties or signs of objects (for example, among toys, invite the child to find 2 identical ones).

Development of logical thinking in children of primary school age:

1) Use of exercises aimed at developing the ability to divide objects into classes (for example, “Read the words (lemon, orange, plum, apple, strawberry) and name the berries and fruits”).

2) Formation of the ability to define concepts.

3) Formation of the ability to highlight essential features items.

Thinking acts mainly as a solution to tasks, questions, problems that are constantly put forward to people by life. Solving problems should always give a person something new, new knowledge. Finding solutions can sometimes be very difficult, so mental activity, as a rule, is an active activity that requires concentrated attention and patience. The real process of thought is always a cognitive process.

Bibliography:

1. Brief psychological dictionary / ed. A. V. Petrovsky, M. G. Yaroshevsky. – Rostov-ND, 1998.

2. Gippenreiter Yu. B. Introduction to general psychology: Tutorial/YU. B. Gippenreiter. - M.: Omega L, 2006.

3. Tertel A. L. Psychology. Course of lectures: Textbook / A. L. Tertel. – M.: Prospekt, 2006.

4. Diagnosis and correction of mental development of preschool children: Textbook/Ed. Y. L. Kolominsky, E. A. Panko. – Mn., 1997.

5. Uruntaeva G. A. Workshop on child psychology: Textbook / G. A. Uruntaeva, Yu. A. Afonkina. – M.: Education, 1995.

Thinking of older preschoolers

2.1 Features of the development of imaginative thinking in children of senior preschool age

thinking preschool visual figurative

The methodological basis for identifying the essence of imaginative thinking is the works of Mukhina V.S., Elesina G.E., Muldarov V.K., Bruner N., Kalmykova Z.I., Obukhova L.F., Semenov I.N., Martsinkovskaya T. .D., Poddyakova N.N.

IN preschool childhood the child has to solve increasingly complex and varied problems that require the identification and use of connections and relationships between objects, phenomena, and actions. In playing, drawing, constructing, and when performing educational and work tasks, he not only uses memorized actions, but constantly modifies them, obtaining new results. Children discover and use the relationship between the degree of moisture in clay and its pliability when sculpting, between the shape of a structure and its stability, between the force of hitting the ball and the height to which it bounces when it hits the floor, etc. Developing thinking gives children the opportunity to foresee the results of their actions in advance and plan them.

As curiosity and cognitive interests develop, thinking is increasingly used by children to master the world around them, which goes beyond the scope of the tasks put forward by their own practical activities.

The child begins to set cognitive tasks for himself and seeks explanations for observed phenomena. Preschoolers resort to some kind of experiments to clarify questions that interest them, observe phenomena, reason about them and draw conclusions.

Children acquire the ability to reason about phenomena that are not related to their personal experience, but which they know about from the stories of adults, books read to them.

Of course, children's reasoning is not always logical. To do this, they lack knowledge and experience. Preschoolers often amuse adults with unexpected comparisons and conclusions.

Establishing cause-and-effect relationships. From clarifying the simplest, most transparent connections and relationships of things that lie on the surface, preschoolers gradually move on to understanding much more complex and hidden dependencies. One of the most important species Such dependencies are relationships of cause and effect. Studies have shown that three-year-old children can only detect causes that consist of some external influence on an object (the table was pushed - it fell). But already at the age of four, preschoolers begin to understand that the causes of phenomena can also lie in the properties of the objects themselves (the table fell because it has one leg). In older preschool age, children begin to indicate as the causes of phenomena not only the immediately striking features of objects, but also their less noticeable but constant properties (the table fell “because it was on one leg, because there are still many edges, because that is heavy and not supported").

Observation of certain phenomena and their own experience of operating with objects allow older preschoolers to clarify their ideas about the causes of phenomena and to come through reasoning to a more correct understanding of them.

By the end of preschool age, children begin to solve rather complex problems that require an understanding of certain physical and other connections and relationships, and the ability to use knowledge about these connections and relationships in new conditions.

The importance of acquiring knowledge for the development of thinking. Expanding the range of tasks available to a child’s thinking is associated with his assimilation of more and more new knowledge. In fact, it is impossible to solve, for example, the problem of tea for hunters, without knowing that snow turns into water when heated, or the problem of the distance over which a ball has rolled, without knowing that movement on a smooth surface is easier than on a rough one. .

Acquiring knowledge is a prerequisite for the development of children's thinking. The fact is that the assimilation of knowledge occurs as a result of thinking, it is the solution of mental problems. A child simply will not understand the adult’s explanations, will not learn any lessons from his own experience, if he fails to perform mental actions aimed at highlighting those connections and relationships that adults point out to him and on which the success of his activities depends. When new knowledge is learned, it is included in the further development of thinking and is used in the child’s mental actions to solve subsequent problems.

Development of mental actions. The basis for the development of thinking is the formation and improvement of mental actions. What kind of mental actions a child masters determines what knowledge he can learn and how he can use it. Mastery of mental actions in preschool age occurs according to the general law of assimilation and internalization of external indicative actions. Depending on what these external actions are and how their internalization occurs, the child’s emerging mental actions take either the form of action with images, or the form of action with signs - words, numbers, etc.

Acting with images in his mind, the child imagines a real action with an object and its result, and in this way solves the problem facing him. This is visual-figurative thinking that is already familiar to us. Performing actions with signs requires distraction from real objects. In this case, words and numbers are used as substitutes for objects. Thinking carried out using actions with signs is abstract thinking. Abstract thinking obeys the rules studied by the science of logic, and is therefore called logical thinking.

The correctness of solving a practical or cognitive problem that requires the participation of thinking depends on whether the child can identify and connect those aspects of the situation, the properties of objects and phenomena that are important and essential for its solution. If a child tries to predict whether an object will float or sink, connecting buoyancy, for example, with the size of the object, he can only guess the solution by chance, since the property he has identified is actually unimportant for swimming. A child who, in the same situation, connects the ability of a body to float with the material from which it is made, identifies a much more essential property; his assumptions will be justified much more often, but again not always. And only isolating the specific gravity of a body in relation to the specific gravity of a liquid (a child acquires this knowledge when studying physics at school) will give an error-free solution in all cases.

The difference between visual-figurative and logical thinking is that these types of thinking make it possible to highlight the essential properties of objects in different situations and thereby find the right solution for different problems. Imaginative thinking turns out to be quite effective in solving problems where the essential properties are those that can be imagined, as if seen with the inner eye. Thus, the child imagines the transformation of snow into water, the movement of a ball along an asphalt path and across a grassy clearing, etc. But often the properties of objects that are essential for solving a problem turn out to be hidden; they cannot be represented, but can be indicated in words or other signs. In this case, the problem can be solved using abstract, logical thinking. Only it allows, for example, to determine the real reason swimming tel. One can imagine the floating of a wooden log or an empty bucket, but the ratio of the specific gravity of a floating body and a liquid can only be expressed in words or an appropriate formula.

Figurative thinking is the main type of thinking of a preschooler. In its simplest forms, it appears already in early childhood, revealing itself in the solution of a narrow range of practical problems related to the child’s objective activity, using the simplest tools. By the beginning of preschool age, children solve in their minds only those tasks in which the action performed by a hand or tool is directly aimed at achieving a practical result - moving an object, using it or changing it.

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Thinking in children younger age develops - from perception to visual-effective thinking, and then to visual-figurative and logical thinking.

Development of thinking in early and preschool age. The first thought processes arise in a child as a result of knowledge of the properties and relationships of objects around him in the process of their perception and in the course of experience of his own actions with objects, as a result of acquaintance with a number of phenomena occurring in the surrounding reality. Consequently, the development of perception and thinking are closely related, and the first glimpses of children's thinking are of a practical (effective) nature, i.e. they are inseparable from the child’s objective activity. This form of thinking is called “visual-effective” and is the earliest.

Visual and effective thinking arises where a person encounters new conditions and a new way of solving a problematic practical problem. The child encounters problems of this type throughout childhood - in everyday and play situations.

An important feature of visual-effective thinking is that practical action, which is carried out by trial, serves as a means of transforming a situation. When identifying the hidden properties and connections of an object, children use the trial and error method, which in certain life circumstances is necessary and the only one. This method is based on discarding incorrect options for action and fixing correct, effective ones and, thus, plays the role of a mental operation.

When solving problematic practical problems, the identification, “discovery of the properties and relationships of objects or phenomena occurs, the hidden, internal properties of objects are discovered. The ability to obtain new information in the process of practical transformations is directly related to the development of visual and effective thinking.

How does a child’s thinking develop? The first manifestations of visual-effective thinking can be observed at the end of the first - beginning of the second year of life. As the child masters walking, his encounters with new objects expand significantly. Moving around the room, touching objects, moving them and manipulating them, the child constantly encounters obstacles, difficulties, looks for a way out, making extensive use of trials, attempts, etc. in these cases. In actions with objects, the child moves away from simple manipulation and moves on to object-play actions that correspond to the properties of the objects with which they are acting: for example, he does not knock the stroller, but rolls it; he places the doll on the crib; puts the cup on the table; stirs in a saucepan with a spoon, etc. By performing various actions with objects (feeling, stroking, throwing, examining, etc.), he practically learns both the external and hidden properties of objects, discovers some connections that exist between objects. So, when one object hits another, noise arises, one object can be inserted into another, two objects, having collided, can move away in different directions, etc. As a result, the object becomes, as it were, a conductor of the child’s influence on another object, i.e. Effective actions can be performed not only by directly influencing an object with the hand, but also with the help of another object - indirectly. As a result of the accumulation of some experience in its use, an object is assigned the role of a means by which the desired result can be obtained. Formed with high quality new form activity - instrumental, when the child uses aids.

Children become familiar with auxiliary objects primarily in everyday life. Children are fed, and then they themselves eat with a spoon, drink from a cup, etc., and begin to use auxiliary aids when they need to get something, secure it, move it, etc. The child’s experience gained in solving practical problems is consolidated in methods of action. Gradually, the child generalizes his experience and begins to use it in various conditions. For example, if a child has learned to use a stick to bring a toy closer to him, then he gets out the toy that has rolled under the closet with the help of another one that is suitable in shape and length: a toy-shovel, a net, a stick, etc. Generalization of the experience of activity with objects prepares the generalization of experience in words, i.e. prepares the child for the formation of visual and effective thinking.

The development of objective activity and its “verbalization” in a child occurs with the active participation of the people around him. Adults set certain tasks for the child, show ways to solve them, and name actions. The inclusion of a word denoting the action being performed qualitatively changes the thought process of a child, even if he does not yet speak spoken language. The action designated by the word acquires the character of a generalized method of solving a group of homogeneous practical problems and is easily transferred to other similar situations. By being involved in the child’s practical activities, speech, even if only audible at first, as if from the inside, rebuilds the process of his thinking. Changing the content of thinking requires its more advanced forms, and already in the process of visual-effective thinking, the prerequisites for visual-figurative thinking are formed.

In early preschool age, profound changes occur both in the content and in the forms of visual and effective thinking. Changing the content of children's visual-effective thinking leads to a change in its structure. Using his generalized experience, the child can mentally prepare and foresee the nature of subsequent events.

Visual-effective thinking contains all the main components of mental activity: defining a goal, analyzing conditions, choosing means to achieve it. When solving a practical problem problem, indicative actions are manifested not only on the external properties and qualities of objects, but also on the internal relationships of objects in a certain situation. At preschool age, a child can already freely navigate the practical tasks that arise before him and can independently find a way out of a problematic situation. Under problematic situation understand a situation in which you cannot act in the usual ways, but need to transform your past experience and find new ways to use it.

The basis for the formation of visual and effective thinking of preschoolers is the development of independent orientation and research activities in solving problematic and practical problems, as well as the formation of the basic functions of speech. In turn, this allows us to strengthen the weak relationship between the main components of cognition: action, word and image.
In the process of acting with objects, the preschooler acquires a motive for his own statements: reasoning, conclusions. On this basis, images-representations are formed that become more flexible and dynamic. When performing actions with objects and changing the real situation, the child creates a fundamental basis for the formation of images and representations. Thus, the visual-practical situation is a unique stage in establishing a strong connection between action and word in a preschooler. Based on this connection, full-fledged images and representations can be built.

Formation of the relationship between word and image

The ability to correctly imagine a situation based on its verbal description is a necessary prerequisite for the development of figurative forms of thinking and speech in a child. It underlies the formation of a mechanism for mentally operating with images of the recreating imagination. In the future, this allows you to perform adequate actions according to instructions, solve intellectual problems, and plan. Thus, this skill forms the foundation of high-quality, purposeful voluntary activity.

It is the relationship between word and image that forms the basis for the development of elements of logical thinking.

Tasks to develop the ability to find a toy or object based on a verbal description, consolidating ideas about the environment.

TASK “GUESS!”

Equipment: toys: ball, matryoshka, Christmas tree, hedgehog, bunny, mouse.

Progress of the lesson. The teacher shows the children a beautiful box and says: “Let’s look at what’s in there.” The teacher examines all the toys with the children and asks them to remember them. Then he covers the toys with a napkin and says: “Now I’ll tell you about one toy, and you can guess which toy I’m talking about.” The teacher recites the poem: “Round, rubber, rolls, they beat him, but he doesn’t cry, he just jumps higher, higher.” In case of difficulty, he opens the napkin and repeats the description of the toy as the children directly perceive it. After the child chooses a toy according to the description, he is asked to talk about it: “Tell me about this toy. What is she like?

The lesson continues, the teacher talks about other toys.

TASK “FIND THE BALL!”

Equipment: five balls: small red, large red with a white stripe, large blue, small green with a white stripe, large green with a white stripe.

Progress of the lesson. The children are shown all the balls one by one and asked to remember them. Then the teacher covers all the balls with a napkin. After this, he gives a description of one of the balls in the form of a story. He says: “Vova brought the ball to kindergarten. The ball was large, red, with a white stripe. Find the ball that Vova brought. We'll play with him." The teacher opens the napkin and asks the child to choose the ball he told about. In case of difficulty or an erroneous choice, the teacher repeats the description of the ball, while the balls remain open. If this technique does not help the child, then clarifying questions should be used: “What size ball did Vova bring? What colour? What was written on the ball? What color is the stripe?”

After the child chooses a ball, he is asked to tell which ball he chose, i.e. justify your choice in a speech statement. Then the children stand in a circle and play with this ball. The game can be continued by offering the children a description of another ball. With such techniques, the teacher attracts children’s attention to consideration and analysis. external signs toys, which, in turn, helps to connect these signs with the child’s own speech.

Equipment: stencils depicting animals: hare, crocodile, giraffe; rectangles representing cells; toys: hare, crocodile, giraffe and building set - bricks.

Progress of the lesson. The teacher invites the children to help “place” the animals in the cages of the zoo, he says: “There are three free cages in the zoo, they are different in size: one is small, low; the other is large and very tall; the third is large and very long. Animals were brought to the zoo: a crocodile, a hare and a giraffe. Help place these animals in cages that are comfortable for them. Tell us which animal should be “placed” in which cage. In case of difficulty, the teacher invites the children to build cages from bricks and place animals in these cages. After the practical activity, children are asked to tell which animals they “placed” in which cages and why.

TASK “WHO LIVES WHERE?”

TASK “GUESS AND DRAW!”

TASK “HALVES TOYS”

Equipment: for each player - a collapsible toy (or object): a mushroom, a car, a hammer, an airplane, an umbrella, a fishing rod, a shovel; bags for each player.

Progress of the lesson. Children are given one half of a toy in bags and asked to guess the toy by touch, without naming it out loud. Then you need to talk about it in such a way that the other child, who ends up with the other half of this toy, guesses and shows his other half. After this, the children connect both halves and make a whole toy.

Puzzles.

• A cap and a leg - that’s all Ermoshka (mushroom).
• Cabin and body, and four wheels, two shiny lights, not buzzing, but humming and running down the street (car).
• Wooden neck, iron beak, knocking "knock, knock, knock" (hammer).
• What kind of bird: doesn’t sing songs, doesn’t build nests, carries people and cargo (airplane).
• On a clear day I stand in the corner, on a rainy day I go for a walk, you carry me above you, but what am I - tell me yourself (umbrella).
• A thread on a stick, a stick in your hand, and a thread in the water (fishing rod).
• I walk next to the janitor, shovel the snow around and help the guys make a slide and build a house. (scapula).

When repeating the game, you need to put other toys in the bags.

TASK “PICTURES-HALVES”

Equipment: subject cut pictures from two parts: scissors, watering can, leaves, turnip, fishing rod, glasses, cucumber, carrot, snowflake; envelopes.

Progress of the lesson. Children are given one part of a cut-out picture in envelopes and asked to examine it without showing it to other children. Having guessed the object shown in the cut-out picture, the child must draw the whole object. Next, each child asks the children a riddle or tells them about the object shown in the picture (or describes it: what shape it is, color, where it grows, what it is needed for, etc.). After the children guess the riddle, the child shows his drawing of the answer. In case of difficulty, the teacher invites the child to ask the children a riddle together.

Puzzles.

• Two ends, two rings, studs in the middle (scissors).
• The cloud is made of plastic, and the cloud has a handle. This cloud went around the garden bed in order (watering can).
• Green coins grow on a tree in the spring, and gold coins fall from the branch in the fall. (leaves).
• Round, but not an onion, yellow, but not butter, sweet, but not sugar, with a tail, but not a mouse (turnip).
• What is in front of us: two shafts behind the ears, a wheel in front of the eyes and a seat on the nose? (glasses).
• I have a magic wand, friends. With this stick I can build a tower, a house, an airplane, and a huge steamship. What is the name of this stick? (pencil).
• It slips away like something alive, but I won’t let it go. It foams with white foam, I’m not too lazy to wash my hands (soap).
• The red nose is rooted in the ground, and the green tail is outside. We don't need a green tail, we only need a red nose (carrot).
• In the summer in the garden - fresh, green, and in the winter in a barrel - green, salted, guess, well done, what is our name...? (cucumbers).
• A white star fell from the sky, landed on my palm and disappeared (snowflake).
• When playing the game again, children should be offered other pictures.

Tasks to develop skills to perform classification

Target- teach children to identify the essential and the secondary, to combine objects on various grounds into one group based on common features.

Games and tasks “Grouping objects (pictures)” without a sample and without a generalizing word. The goal is to teach children to use a visual model when solving elementary logical classification problems.

GAME “SOLVED THE TOYS!”

Equipment: a set of toys of different sizes (three each): nesting dolls, bells, vases, houses, Christmas trees, bunnies, hedgehogs, cars; three identical boxes.

Progress of the lesson. The teacher shows the children toys and says: “These toys need to be put into three boxes. Each box should contain toys that are somewhat similar to each other. Think about which toys you will put in one box, which in another, and which in a third.” If a child arranges toys in random order, the teacher helps him: “Which toys are similar to each other, choose them (for example, nesting dolls). How do these nesting dolls differ from each other? Put them in boxes." Then the teacher gives the child bells and asks them to distribute them to the nesting dolls: “Think about which bell you will give to the largest nesting doll.” Next, the child arranges the toys himself and generalizes the principle of grouping. The teacher asks: “Tell me which toys you put in the first box, which ones in the second, and which ones in the third.” In case of difficulty, he himself generalizes: “In one box there are the smallest toys; in the other - more, and in the third - the largest."

GAME “SOLD OUT THE PICTURES!”

Equipment: pictures depicting objects: transport, dishes, furniture (eight of each type).

Progress of the lesson. The teacher shows the children a set of pictures and asks them to sort them into several groups so that the pictures in each group are somewhat similar. In case of difficulty, the teacher gives the child the instruction as a basis for grouping: “Select all the pictures depicting dishes. Now let’s see where the furniture is,” etc. After the child has laid out all the pictures, it is necessary to help him formulate the principle of grouping: “In one group all the pictures depict dishes, in another - furniture, and in the third - transport.”

GAME “SOLVED THE OBJECTS!”

Equipment: a set of eight toys and objects of various purposes, but some are wooden, and others are plastic: cars, pyramids, mushrooms, plates, beads, cubes, houses, two Christmas trees; two identical boxes.

Progress of the lesson. The teacher examines all the toys with the child one at a time (not in pairs), and then says: “These toys must be placed in two boxes so that each box contains toys that are somewhat similar to each other.” In case of difficulty, the teacher takes the first pair of toys - Christmas trees - puts them next to each other and asks the children to compare: “How do these Christmas trees differ from each other?” If the children cannot find the main difference, the teacher draws the children's attention to the material from which these toys are made. Then the children act independently. At the end of the game, you need to generalize the principle of grouping: “In one box - everything wooden Toys, and in the other - all plastic."

TASK “DRAW A PICTURE!”

Equipment: 24 cards depicting fish, birds and animals (eight of each type); three envelopes.

Progress of the lesson. The teacher tells the children: “Someone mixed up my pictures. You need to arrange these pictures into three envelopes so that the pictures are somewhat similar to each other. On each envelope you need to draw a picture so that it is clear what kind of pictures are there.” The teacher does not interfere in the process of completing the task, even if the child completes the task incorrectly. After the child arranges the pictures, the teacher says: “Tell me what pictures you put in this envelope, why? How are they similar to each other? etc. In case of difficulty, the teacher gives examples for arranging pictures in envelopes. Then asks the child to name this group of pictures in one word and draw a picture on the envelope.

TASK “PAIRED PICTURES”

Equipment: eight pairs of pictures that depict the same objects, only some are singular and others are plural: one cube - three cubes; one chicken - five chickens; one pencil - two pencils; one apple - four apples; one nesting doll - three nesting dolls; one flower - eight flowers; one cherry - seven cherries; one machine - six machines.

Progress of the lesson. The teacher allows the child to look at all the pictures, and then asks them to divide them into two groups: “Arrange them so that in each group there are pictures that are somewhat similar to each other.” Regardless of how the child arranges the pictures, the teacher does not interfere. After the child has sorted out the pictures, the teacher asks: “Which pictures did you put in one group and which ones in another?” Then he offers to explain the principle of grouping. In case of difficulty, the teacher asks the child to choose one pair of booths, compare them, and explain how they differ. After this, it is again proposed to arrange the pictures according to the pattern, and then explain the principle of grouping.

Word games

“WHAT IS ROUND AND WHAT IS OVAL?”

Progress of the lesson. The teacher asks the child to name as many round and oval-shaped objects as possible. The child starts the game. If he cannot name it, the teacher begins: “I remember, an apple is round, and a testicle is oval. Now you continue. Remember which is the shape of a plum and which is a gooseberry? That’s right, the plum is oval, and the gooseberry is round.” (Helps the child name objects and compare them by shape: ring-fish, hedgehog-ball, cherry-cherry leaf, watermelon-melon, acorn-raspberry, tomato-eggplant, sunflower-seed, zucchini-apple). In case of difficulty, the teacher shows the child a set of pictures and together they sort them into two groups.

"IT FLYS - DOESN'T FLY"

Progress of the lesson. The teacher invites the children to quickly name objects when he says the word “flies”, and then name other objects when he says the word “does not fly”. The teacher says: “It flies.” Children call: “Crow, airplane, butterfly, mosquito, fly, rocket, dove,” etc. Then the teacher says: “It doesn’t fly.” Children call: “Bicycle, daisy, cup, dog, pencil, kitten,” etc. The game continues: the words “flies” and “does not fly” are named by one of the children, and the teacher names the objects together with the children. The game can be played while walking.

"EDIBLE-INEDIBLE"

The game is played in the same way as the previous one.

"LIVING-NON-LIVING"

The game is played by analogy with the game “It doesn’t fly.”

“WHAT HAPPENS BELOW AND WHAT HAPPENS ABOVE?”

Progress of the lesson. The teacher invites the children to think and name what happens only at the top. If the children find it difficult, he prompts: “Let's look up, the sky is above us. Does it happen downstairs? No, it always happens only at the top. What else happens only at the top? Where are the clouds? (stars, moon). Now think about what happens only below? Look at the ground. Where does the grass grow? Where does she go? "(plants, bodies of water, earth, sand, stones, etc.). After this, the children independently list the objects of nature that are only at the top, and those that are only at the bottom.

“WHAT IS SWEET?”

Progress of the lesson. The teacher invites the children: “Listen carefully, I will call what is sweet. And if I make a mistake, then I need to be stopped, I need to say: “Stop!” The teacher says: “Sugar, marshmallows, raspberries, strawberries, lemon.” The children listen carefully and stop him on the word where he “made a mistake.” Then the children themselves name what is sweet.

"RESPOND QUICKLY"

Equipment: ball.

Progress of the lesson. The teacher, holding a ball in his hands, stands in a circle with the children and explains the rules of the game: “Now I will name a color and throw the ball to one of you. The one who catches the ball must name an object of the same color. Then he himself names any other color and throws the ball to the next one. He also catches the ball, names the object, then his color, etc.” For example, “Green,” says the teacher (takes a short pause, giving the children the opportunity to remember green objects) and throws the ball to Vita. “Grass,” Vitya answers and, saying: “Yellow,” throws the ball to the next one. The same color can be repeated several times, since there are many objects of the same color.

The main feature for classification can be not only the color, but also the quality of the item. The beginner says, for example: “Wooden,” and throws the ball. “Table,” answers the child who caught the ball, and offers his word: “Stone.” “House,” answers the next player and says: “Iron,” etc. Next time, the main feature is the form. The teacher says the word “round” and throws the ball to anyone playing. “Sun,” he replies and names another shape, for example “square,” throwing the ball to the next player. He names a square-shaped object (window, scarf, book) and suggests some form. The same shape can be repeated several times, since many objects have the same shape. When repeated, the game can be complicated by offering to name not one, but two or more objects.

“WHAT ARE THEY SIMILAR?”

Progress of the lesson. The teacher invites the children to look around and find two objects that are somewhat similar to each other. He says: “I’ll call it: chicken sun. How do you think they are similar to each other? Yes, that's right, they are similar in color. And here are two more objects: a glass and a window. How are they similar to each other? And now each of you will name two objects that are similar to each other.”
Games to eliminate the fourth “extra” word.

"BE CAREFUL!"

Progress of the lesson. The teacher tells the children: “I will name four words, one word does not fit here. You must listen carefully and name the “extra” word.” For example: matryoshka, tumbler, cup, doll; table, sofa, flower, chair; chamomile, hare, dandelion, cornflower; horse, bus, tram, trolleybus; wolf, crow, dog, fox; sparrow, crow, dove, chicken; apple, Christmas tree, carrot, cucumber. After each highlighted “extra” word, the teacher asks the child to explain why this word does not fit into this group of words, i.e. explain the principle of grouping.

“GUESS WHICH WORD DOESN’T FIT!”

Progress of the lesson. The teacher says that this game is similar to the previous one, only here the words are combined differently. He further explains: “I will name the words, and you think about how three words are similar and one is not similar. Name the “extra” word.” The teacher says: “Cat, house, nose, car. What word doesn't fit? In case of difficulty, he himself compares these words according to their sound composition. Then he offers the children another series of words: frog, grandmother, duck, cat; drum, tap, machine, raspberry; birch, dog, wolf, kitten, etc. In each proposed series of words, the teacher helps the child compare the words according to their syllable composition.

“MAKE UP A WORD!”

Progress of the lesson. The teacher invites the children to come up with words for a certain sound: “Now you and I will find out what words consist of. I say: sa-sa-sa - here is a wasp flying. Shi-shi-shi - that's what babies are like. In the first case, I repeated the sound “s” a lot, and in the second, which sound did I name the most? - The sound “sh” is correct. Now think of words with the sound “s”. The first word I will name is “sugar”, and now you name words with the sound “s”. Then, by analogy, the game continues with the sound “sh”.

"LISTEN CAREFULLY!"

Progress of the lesson. The teacher says to the child: “I will name the words, and you will say which word does not fit: cat, cone, dress, hat; tractor, basket, rubber, elderberry; river, turnips, beets, carrots; book, faucet, ball, cat; water, pen, watchman, cotton wool.” In case of difficulty, he slowly repeats a certain set of words and helps the child identify the common sound in the words. When playing the game again, the teacher offers the children various options for tasks to eliminate the fourth “extra.”