Abstract:

In pre-school age, play is the form of activity that contributes to the maturity of child’s personality, enriches his/ her inside. Play is an integral, continuous activity of the child’s cognition and development. Through play, the child depicts the reality of life and at the same time, thanks to the imagination, creates something new, unique during the game. Cognitive competence in pre-school age is developed by encouraging children to experiment, discover, reflect, evaluate, and generalize when the child observes, plays, creates and goes on trips. The child’s own research, testing, reasoning, and independent search for answers to questions of concern are of great importance for cognition. The best experience for a child is a game in which the child’s activity is aroused and he or she is directed to search. The cognitive skills of children are developed by playing various games, such as didactic, creative role-playing, role-playing storylines, etc.

The aim of the study is to explore the possibilities of developing cognitive skills for pre-school age children through games.

Before the empirical research, scientific and methodological literature, information sources and education documents of the Republic of Lithuania were analysed. The quantitative research method chosen for the study is a questionnaire. The study involved 70 pre-school teachers who have different work experiences. All respondents have a higher education degree. The scope of the study is non-probability convenience sampling.

The results of the empirical study revealed that most pedagogues agree that it is crucial to develop child’s cognitive skills in pre-school age. Pedagogues who develop pre-school children’s cognitive competence through games have sufficient knowledge and skills to apply didactic, creative role-playing and role-playing storylines in the educational process successfully, which encourage the creativity, curiosity, interest and exploration of students. According to pedagogues, the development of pre-school children’s cognitive competence through games would allow better results to be achieved through the provision of appropriate means, a smaller number of children in groups, a safe group environment, access to modern information technologies and more active parental involvement.

Keywords:

Pre-school children, cognitive competence, education through games, pedagogues of pre-school education.