IntroductionThe Campbell Child and Family Center (CCFC) is a high-quality early childhood education program in Durango, Colorado. CCFC uses the Creative Curriculum for Early Childhood, which incorporates Jean Piaget's work on cognitive development to establish developmentally appropriate learning programs for preschool children. I observed N for about 20 hours at CCFC where he has been studying since November 2012. N is almost four years old and lives with his mother, father and older brother. N attends the Lightning Bugs structured preschool program with 14 other students. The adult-to-child ratio of the Lightning Bugs room is 1:8.Literature ReviewDuring the early childhood or preschool years, cognitive skills develop rapidly, allowing children to emerge from total dependence on caregivers to become part of the vast world outside the room. family (Rathus, 2011). Cognitive development refers to the ongoing growth of perception, memory, imagination, conception, judgment, and reason. Cognitive development involves the mental activities of understanding information and the processes of acquiring, organizing, remembering and using knowledge (Rathus, 2011). According to Piaget's theory of stages (1964), the development of knowledge is a spontaneous process linked to the development of the body, the nervous system and mental functions. To understand the development of knowledge, we begin with the idea of ​​operation, which is incorporating a concept, value, or schema into part of one's mental structure. In other words, the developing child builds networked cognitive structures or concepts to understand and respond to physical objects and experiences in his or her environment. The interaction between the child and his... middle of paper ......opmentum in children: Piaget's development and learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2(3), 176-186. doi:10.1002/tea.3660020306Piaget, J. (1977). The development of thought: Balancing cognitive structures. Oxford England: Viking.Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1969). Child psychology. New York: Basic Books.Rathus, S.A. (2011). HDEV. California: Cengage Learning.Schultz, T. R., & Mendelson, R. (1975). The use of covariation as a principle of causal analysis. Child Development, 46, 394-399. doi:10.2307/1128133Walker, C. M., & Gopnik, A. (2013). Pretend and possibility: A theoretical proposal on the effects of pretend play on development: Comment on Lillard et al. (2013). Psychological Bulletin, 139(1), 40-44. doi:10.1037/a0030151Vygotsky, L. S. (1967). Play and its role in the mental development of the child. Soviet psychology, 5(3), 6-18.