It was Monday morning and a sharp corner on a large immovable object (left by another group sharing the space used by the preschool…sound familiar?) unexpectedly turned into a chance to assess the understanding of symbols by one three-year-old.
“Ricky” had stepped past the orange cones which surrounded the sharp-cornered plywood platform. I explained that the platform was not ours, the corners were sharp—something to stay away from—and that the orange cones were a symbol for “stop”, that they meant we were not to go past them. “Oh, there should be a sign,” he said, and in a minute he was back with the plastic STOP sign from the bike area.
He recognized that the cone represented another symbol he was familiar with, a STOP sign, and the command to stop. I wonder at what age he will be able to understand that a globe represents the a planet, Earth, and that the Moon is a sphere?