**2. Stages of child development**

A child is a human being in the "cradle" of her or his development. Childhood is the period from birth until about the 12th year of a person's life. It is a time of great physical develop‐ ment, manifested by progressive increase in height and weight of the child. It is also the pe‐ riod when the human being develops psychologically, and during which changes occur in behaviour and the foundations of personality are developed. Regarding the maturity of all species that inhabit the Earth, the human being is the one with the slowest growth and de‐ velopment rates of all. The human is a rather slow developing species; for example, in the time that a child learns to walk and run with sufficient equilibrium, other species reach full maturity, as is the case of rats, who reach sexual maturity in only 15 days.

date time actors (age) Description of activities General impressions per child

Leandro - interest or joy - "difficulty" -indifference

Toy Design Methods: A Sustainability Perspective

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/52858

Leandro - joy or motivation - joy or motivation - apprehensive or

fearful

Vasco - concentration or joy - interest or concentration - joy or satisfaction or

happiness

Catarina - interest - happiness

Alexandra - indifference - joy


169

Tiago - concentration - energy or satisfaction - "imagination" - indifference - "imagination"





**Table 1.** Observation of children at play (several children interacted with the second author in a family setting).

In order to find a point of connection between sustainability and education for sustainability a search was initially made for concepts and needs within sustainable development. Subse‐ quently, an analysis was made of the universe in education for sustainability and a letter from the Earth is presented, which is a declaration of fundamental principles for building a

Enough for everyone, forever. These words resonate with the ideas of limited resources, re‐ sponsible consumption, equality and equity and a long-term perspective, all of them corre‐ sponding to important concepts of sustainable development (Portuguese Ministry of





(40min) - playing with the dog (15min)

10:53 Catarina (3 y.) - looking at books (38min)

24-12 2010

26-12 2010

28-12 2010

02-01 2011

15-01 2011

17:12 Leandro (23 m.) Leonor (4 y.)

14:46 Leandro (23 m.)

15:30 Vasco (14 m.)

14:25 Tiago (12 y.) Alexandra (10 y.)

**3. Education for sustainability**

society that is fair, sustainable and peaceful.

**3.1. Sustainable development**

According to Wallon (1981), the human being is determined physiologically and socially, subject to internal arrangements (affective), and external situations (sensorial-motor). In this way the study of human development must consider the subject as grounded in its relation‐ ship with the environment. This author considers the following five stages of development: impulsive-emotional - 0 months-1 year (the predominant affection); sensor-motor and pro‐ jective - 3 months-3 years (dominated by intelligence); personalism - 3-6 years (formation of the personality of the individual and self-awareness); categorical stage - 6-11 years (develop‐ ment of memory capacities and voluntary attention); stage of adolescence - 11-16 years (physical and psychological changes). However, the stages of human development do not cease in adolescence, as, according to Wallon (1981), the learning processes that occur throughout life involve crossing a new stage of development.

Jean Piaget considered that the development of children also occurred in stages, however, according to Piaget and Inhelder (1995), the key is the sequential order of stages and not the age at which each one arises. To make up a new stadium, one must have passed through and overcome the previous stages. Jean Piaget believed that there are four stages of develop‐ ment, which he detailed in his Cognitive Theory. These stages are: the sensor-motor stage - 0 months-2 years; preoperative - 2-7 years (egocentricity); stage of concrete operations - 7-11 years (integrated mental organization); and stage of formal operations - 12 years and over (development of abstract thinking operations).

#### **2.1. Observation of children at play**

The previous section, aimed at contextualizing the work in this chapter, which is centred on children, presented the stages of their cognitive development (psychosocial and emotional). In order to support this contextualization, a set of observations of children at play, presented in Table 1, were made, as a form of recognition in practice of the concepts presented. These observations also allowed inference of the type of activities, the duration thereof and the re‐ actions of children during play. Especially in the cases where two children of different ages were observed playing together, the observed states of the children are different in some cases. These result from the diverse stages of development of the children and the adequate‐ ness and appeal and complexity of the activities being carried out.


**Table 1.** Observation of children at play (several children interacted with the second author in a family setting).
