Concept development is a process that explains the changes that take place in stages due to the growth and experience which is the building blocks of knowledge. This will allow people to organise and categorise information or solve a matter met during the different stages in life. Different children develop differently, they have their own pace. If they reach a certain stage one or two years later compare to those of their same age, it’s still considered within the normal range of development.

Following are Piagetian stages of concept development of children based on their age range:

• Sensorimotor(birth to 2 years old)
  Babies learn with their 5 senses, sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing. In addition, they also utilise their their motor abilities to learn basic skills and concepts such as:
  Observation, problem solving, one-to-one correspondence, number, shape, and spatial sense
• Preoperational(2-7 years old)
  Children develop concepts that are more like those of adults but still not complete in relation to what they will be like at maturity. Speech is used increasingly to express concept knowledge such as big and small, light and heavy etc.
  Fundamental concepts and skills: Sets and classifying, comparing, counting, parts and wholes, and language.
  Applied concepts and skills: Ordering, dseriation, patterning, informal measurement(weight, length, temperature, volume, time and sequence)
  Higher level concepts and skills: Number symbols, sets and symbols
• Transitional(5-7 years old)
  There would be two types of children, one type is the conserver and another type is non conserver. This is a critical stage where teachers must look out for to ensure that they have real understanding of what mathematical operations mean.
  Applied concepts and skills: Graphing(pie chart, height chart etc.)
  Higher level concepts and skills: Concrete addition and substraction
• Concrete operational(7-11 years old)
  They are able to retain original picture or object and making a mental reversal when appearance if a picture or object is changed.
  Primary concepts and skills: Whole number, operations, fractions, number facts, place value, geometry, measurement with standard units
• Formal operations(11 and above)
  Ability to learn scientific method independently, learn to solve problem in logical and systematic manner, understand abstract concepts, and attack abstract problems.

Piaget’s view of how children acquire knowledge is divided into 3 areas:

• Physical knowledge, learning about objects in environment and their characteristic(weight, height sise, texture or anything that can be determined through observation and are physically within the object).
• Logico-mathematical knowledge involves relationships each individual construct to make sense out of the world and to organise information.
• Social(conventional) knowledge is created by people such as rules of behaviours in various social situations.

Learning cycle of early childhood:

• Awareness: borad recognition of objects, events, people or concepts that develops from experience.
• Exploration: Construction of special meaning through sensory experiences with objects, peoples, events or concept.
• Inquiry: Learners compare their constructions with those of the culture, commonalities are recognized, generalisations are made that like those of adults.
• Utilization: Applying and using their undersanding in new settings and situations.