FREE ESSAY ON CHILD OBSERVATION REPORT

CHILD OBSERVATION REPORT

Robert Reitz
Dev. Psych
Dr. Trimble
4/13/00
Child Observation Report
For this project, I observed my mother's preschool class for three hours, and three kids
that she baby-sits on weekends for three hours. Most of the kids that are in the
preschool class were three years old, but there was one five year old. The kids I helped
baby-sit were two twin three year old girls, and one five year old.
When I first arrived at the preschool, the kids seemed very shy towards me and they did
not seem like they were very sociable. I was a stranger to them, and I would have to
guess that all of the children were experiencing a little bit of stranger anxiety. I
talked to my mother about how the children reacted at the beginning of the year when they
did not know her and the parents left them there. She said that the children often would
cry and become very uneasy. I believe that these would be signs of separation anxiety. 
As I sat down to play with the children, I noticed one thing right away. The boys in the
group were very wild and rambunctious, and the girls seemed to be shy and reserved. This
would agree with what we have learned in class that boys will tend to be more outgoing,
and girls will be more reserved. 
In preschool class, my mother has various stuffed animals, and I also noticed that the
children that I helped baby-sit had a lot of stuffed animals. My mother often has puppet
shows and the kids love it. I noticed one child was sitting at the table having a
conversation with a stuffed beaver. The two twin girls I was baby-sitting had a giant
stuffed bee, and I would chase after them with it and sting them. This shows what the
book calls animistic thinking. According to the book, this kind of thinking is the belief
that inanimate objects are alive. Another form of animistic thinking would be when my
mother told a story about a leprechaun. When my mother asked where leprechauns lived, one
child replied that, and I quote, "leprechauns live in the grass and run around from tree
to tree, they are itsy bitsy and very hard to see." These children believed that these
creatures were real, but they just could not see them. But, the fun with the leprechauns
had just begun. To test the children's belief in the unrealistic, I had my mother and the
kids make little pots, and then I had my mother tell all of the kids that if they were
good, the leprechaun would leave them gold in their pot. While these kids were eating
their snacks, I left and put gold candy in their pots, and then waited for their
reactions and comments when they came back to see what had happened. I wish I could have
recorded their reactions because some of them were hilarious. I noticed that one child
jumped around and screamed that "he was here, he was here," and another child was looking
around the room trying to find the leprechaun. Overall, I found that my animistic
thinking project worked well. To conclude my observations on animistic thinking, I found
that most of the kids seemed to have beliefs based on what they sensed to be true, rather
than on what would be logic or rational.
Language development between the three-year-old kids, and the five-year-old kids was
amazing. There were some grammatical morpheme problems that I picked up on throughout my
stay at the preschool and when I was baby-sitting the other girls. I did not notice many
mistakes by the five-year-old girl, in fact she was very good with sentence structure and
words. But, I did notice a lot of the three year old kids struggled with prepositions,
suffixes, and prefixes. I few sentences I heard were, "he sitted down on me," or "she
hitted me with the beaver." As you can see, the children are learning that they need to
add the "ed" to the end of some words, but they do not know when it is and when it is not
appropriate to do it yet.
I noticed a lot of imitation in the children at the preschool. I guess I was an adult
model for some of the children. I noticed that one child followed me around the room one
time when I went to go to the bathroom. He did not go into the bathroom, but I did notice
that everything I did when I walked back to the room, he did. Why do kids do that? The
girls I baby-sat for played an annoying game on me one time. Just try to imagine two
three-year-old twin girls repeating everything I said. I guess that would be a form of
imitation. I also noticed imitation between the kids themselves. The naughty boys in the
preschool seemed to almost copy each other when they would cause trouble. If one was
standing on his chair, the other would stand on his chair. And, if one was playing in a
certain area, then the other one would go to that area to play. The girls often imitated
one another also. I noticed that one little girl went to go play with the dolls, and sure
enough, most of the other girls went along to play with the dolls with her. In conclusion
to imitation, I would imagine that imitation is a great way for children to learn about
the world, and is often a sociable test to see how far that they can stretch the rules. I
noticed that when a model is present, imitation is likely to take place.
I spent a great deal of time watching how the children in the preschool played, and when
I was baby-sitting, I did more playing than watching. In the book, play is described as
"pleasurable activity engaged for its own sake." I noticed that there was some parallel
play. An example I found was when two boys were playing with Lego's. The boys did not
participate directly with one another, but they played alongside each other and other
children while they were enjoying their Lego's. There was some associative play, but I
saw more of this in the girls. Some of the girls were playing with Barbie's, and were
having their own little soap opera going on. The girls were demonstrating associative
play because they were playing and sharing with each other. I had the chance to
participate in cooperative play when we played "duck, duck, goose!" Come on, you know the
game. Well, I was pretty good at the game so they made me crawl on my knees. But, this
showed cooperative play because the children were involved in structured games that
involved rules. When I was baby-sitting, I was involved in some fantasy play. The twin
three-year-old girls told me that I was the daddy, and one was the mommy, and the other
was the kid, and the giant stuffed bee was also a kid. We played in a little area with
toy stoves and washing machines and stuff. This is an example of fantasy play because
these young girls believed that things were different than they really were. 
The last thing I noticed while observing the two twin girls was that there was a little
bit of sibling rivalry. They both fought constantly for my attention. 
Overall, I enjoyed observing the children, and enjoyed playing with them. I learned a lot
about what kids do, and had the chance to experience it hands on.