Piaget Task Assignment

I tried a few of the Piaget tasks with my niece and nephew. Hailey, my niece, is 5. Caden is 3. I used a few of the tests that Dr. Cox used with her own children. I had two piles of clay that were shaped the same, and I asked each of the children if they were the same size. They both said they were. Then I flattened one pile of clay and asked if they were still the same size. Both children said they were not, however, Hailey thought about it as though she was considering that they may not be the same size.
Both children determined that the amounts changed of all the things I used to test them (water, beads, cookies). They didn't seem to grasp that simply re-arranging things did not change the quantity. I wished that I had someone a little bit older to do the tasks with, but my husband didn't want to participate and those were the only children I could try it with over the week.


It was so interesting to me how both children would say the piles were the same size inititally, but would insist that the quantity had changed whenever I re-arranged something or poured it into a cup a different size. Hailey was really thinking about what I was doing, and I could see the wheels turning in her head. She kept asking people for help like she didn't want to be wrong, so we just kept telling her to try her best and that she was doing great. Caden didn't seem to get what was going on and was just loving the attention. He wanted to play with whatever we were putting in front of him. Although Hailey was thinking that I had changed the quantities of what I was using, she put a lot more thought into it than I had expected her to; I thought she would be too young to even try to think through what I was doing.