One aspect of development that changes with age are the fears of children. During the preschool years, Piaget’s stage of Preoperational Thought, the fears are typically fears that stem from their inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy; they are fears of the imagination, including monsters, the dark, some animals, and even loud noises. And causes for fears can be fixed or banished because adults are all-powerful.

During middle childhood, Piaget’s stage of Concrete Operational Thought, their fears become reality-based; they begin to know some things are real, concrete, and logical; and some things are pretend. They begin to realize adults are not all powerful and there are some situations or conditions that adults can’t control… like the coronavirus. So for school-aged children, factual information and factors that can be controlled, like hand washing and face-covering can be reassuring.

DIRECTIONS:
1.Please explore the COVID resources in Module 10 then share your ideas about how you might share information and reassure a five-year-old kindergartner about the coronavirus. For reference you can use what I’ve written about, what the text says about fears, and what the articles and videos share. If you want instead of writing this, you can post a video in the discussion, sharing with a child or like you would share with a child.

Initial post due by 10/24/20 11:59PM. You can either share it as an attachment to your discussion or use the embed image icon in the Discussion toolbar. Any of these will work.