Preschoolers are ready and eager to learn! They marvel at new experiences and show great initiative in learning to create and use symbols to represent present and non-present objects (e.g., representational drawings, letters, words, numbers). They have learned (syntactically and pragmatically) to ask questions, the most common of which is “why” or “how.” As a result, they are also learning the words, and the concept behind words, such as “because” or “so” (e.g., Why does my bike go? Because I push the pedals).
By the age of three, children have a basic understanding of category formation (e.g., which items are living vs. non-living, sorting by color, etc.), as well as a basic understanding of cause and effect (e.g., When I run, my heart beats faster). For two fun online ways to foster your child’s cause-and-effect understanding, try