Cognitive Development Audit Report

Cognitive Development Audit

1. The resources/equipment for cognitive development?

Item/resource/equipment	Is the item age appropriate? What age is it made for?	How does it promote problem-solving?	Give an example of a time a child has used the item
Building Blocks (e.g., LEGO, wooden blocks)	Yes. 1-4 years	Supports critical thinking and strategies of building and rebuilding when the structures fall down.	During the building of the tower a child faced the challenge of founding a stable structure. The two attempted various types of blocks dispositions to try and achieve a solution.
Puzzles (Jigsaw, Shape Sorters)	Yes. 2-5 years	Helps a child in identifying patterns, getting promotions in spatial orientation, and sound logical thinking.	There a 3-year-old child failed to correctly sort shapes into their respective holes but succeeded after multiple attempts.
Role-Play Sets (Kitchen, Doctor Set)	Yes. 2-6 years	Promote social awareness, encourage the child to analyze a social situation, solves some pretend situations and engages in social reasoning.	One of the children engaged in the play activity which helped them solve such a problem. For example when some ingredients were missing they pretended that they ordered for them.
Sensory Bins (Sand, Water Play)	Yes. 1-5 years.	Supports the investigation, discovery, critical thinking about cause and effect, and an opportunity to work with various materials.	A child has investigated different pathways of the water in relation to their angle of the container and rate of pouring.

2. Utilisation of environment for cognitive development

Setting includes values that support problem solving, extended period of discussing the problem, and cognitive development. It is highly recommended that there are sections or zones that hold resources that enable children to innovate and rationally reason. The play area provides an opportunity to enact various scenarios of everyday life, therefore, discussions and main ideas sharing (Kruse et al. 2021). The construction area includes the main construction blocks and puzzles and it is a good activity since children engage themselves in different fits and attempts of how to build the structures. A representation of this is the play area where sand and water are available for the children this stimulates development of because effect relationship. The book corner consists of the information that helps to develop thinking abilities and contribute to discussion about certain cases.

3. Activities to support shared thinking and problem-solving

The following were some of the activities that were possible on the day of the audit that enhances the cognitive aspect. A popular activity saw the children develop such features as an ability to identify patterns while solving puzzles. The social activity that involved sharing of ideas in a group enabled child educationists to come up with ideas on how to help the children make creative stories out of what they were being told (Francesconi et al. 2022). Specifically in the role-play area, children pretended to own and run a shop and engage in the counting of money, thus making them solve problems and communicate. There was a playground outside that had different courses for the children to complete whereby the objectives of the games encouraged children to practice teamwork and intelligence. Each activity used in the lesson made the children think, explore and come up with solution through a play way method.

4. Missing activities or resources

There are no such stuffs like Objects, Concepts, Relationships, People, and Events in the environment that could be beneficial during problem solving / shared thinking activity. There is a lack of free items such as loose parts, which may be used in creation and critical thinking. Additional STEM related products like magnets, blocks, toys, code friendly toys and science sets would enable the child cause and effect (Aydin et al. 2022). There are also few big constructs for group works and this could facilitate team and group exercises and thinking. Certain ideas can be added on visual forms in order to provoke discussions and encourage critical thinking by using question boards.

5. Including factors to reduce problem-solving issue

If I could design my own setting with no limitations with regard to money, I would incorporate a specific zone especially for STEM where children can play with robots, computer games that teach coding, and science tables, to develop their thinking abilities. An area for children to explore the environment, water area, climbing structures and activities that involve solving puzzles would be effective in this aspect. The playful element that can be developed for the children is through the provision of a sensory room with light tables and other textile items that the children could use to further develop their cognitive skills through exploration (Aina & Bipath, 2022). There should also be an activity zone for storytelling involving digital story books and puppets so that the child can even develop his/her thinking ability and come up with new ideas for the story. Additionally, providing materials introduced as more open-ended loose parts such as wooden planks, tubes and fabrics would enhance the development of the children’s ideas and thought process. Such a setting would accommodate the processes of problem solving and thinking as a team.

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Reference List

Journals

Aina, A.Y. and Bipath, K., 2022. Availability and use of infrastructural resources in promoting quality early childhood care and education in registered early childhood development centres. South African Journal of Childhood Education, 12(1), p.980.

Aydin, E., Weiss, S.M., Glasgow, K.A., Barlow, J., Austin, T., Johnson, M.H. and Lloyd-Fox, S., 2022. COVID-19 in the context of pregnancy, infancy and parenting (CoCoPIP) study: protocol for a longitudinal study of parental mental health, social interactions, physical growth and cognitive development of infants during the pandemic. BMJ open, 12(6), p.e053800.

Barron, S. and Rugel, E.J., 2023. Tolerant greenspaces: Designing urban nature-based solutions that foster social ties and support mental health among young adults. Environmental Science & Policy, 139, pp.1-10.

Dickson, T.J. and Gray, T.L., 2022. Nature-based solutions: Democratising the outdoors to be a vaccine and a salve for a neoliberal and COVID-19 impacted society. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 22(4), pp.278-297.

Francesconi, M., Flouri, E. and Kirkbride, J.B., 2022. The role of the built environment in the trajectories of cognitive ability and mental health across early and middle childhood: Results from a street audit tool in a general-population birth cohort. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 82, p.101847.

Kruse, J., Kang, Y., Liu, Y.N., Zhang, F. and Gao, S., 2021. Places for play: Understanding human perception of playability in cities using street view images and deep learning. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 90, p.101693.