As I finished signing in the login sheet at the RCC Child Development Center I walked into the hallway and I stopped at Room 2. Immediately an energetic boy popped up out of his chair and caught my attention so I began to observe him. After he left the table he jogged over to the placemat that had his name which read Dillon. In the circle time area he sat on his knees moving his arms around in a circular motion while making whooshing sounds and accidentally hit the girl sitting next to him. Dillon quickly said, “I’m sorry for hitting you Evelynn” (psychosocial development, initiative vs. guilt).
The teacher walked over to the circle time along with more of the children. Dillon became distracted once his he saw some of his friends and he abruptly began singing, “Jingle Bells Jingle Bells!” and he wiggled his body as his friends started to join in (visual and performing arts, biosocial development). His teacher asked the boys to quiet down and listen to her. She started to sing their morning song and the children had to stomp their feet, clap their hands, and smile.
Dillon was delayed in his reactions of stomping and clapping while his classmates did (cognitive development, gross motor skills). Once the song was over the teacher told a story (I was unable to hear most of it) about an animal eating the farmers carrots because the classroom theme was Farmer’s Market. While sitting there, Dillon interrupted the teacher’s last announcement because he wanted to show everyone the scab on his leg from when he fell down at the park.
Once the teacher finished with circle time she allowed the students to engage in free play. Dillon stood up and walked over to the labeled storage bins and grabbed a fire truck and began to tell the student intern how, “all fire trucks have ladders and water to put fires out” (cognitive development, overregularization).
He became intrigued when he noticed another child had on the Firefighter outfit on so he got up, put his toy away, and walked to the dramatic play area and grabbed the Cop uniform. He put the outfit on and said, “I’m a cop! I say if people are good or bad!” He began to walk around the classroom and looking at what the other students were doing and he would either give a thumbs up to people or a thumbs down based on what activity they were doing (psychosocial development, sociodramatic play).
After he walked around the room, he went to the manipulative art table and sits next to the student intern. He grabs a piece of orange construction paper and a pair of scissors. The student intern asks Dillon what he is going to create and he replies, “I want an orange, I’m hungry!” Dillon begins to cut the orange construction paper into the shape of a circle (biosocial development, fine motor skills). Once he cut his orange he grabbed a few markers and drew squiggly lines on the paper.
He went up to his teacher and silently handed her his artwork and then he skipped over to the reading nook. Dillon was searching through the books until he found one he liked. He grabbed a pillow and rested his head while trying to use his finger to follow along the sentence he was reading.
After a few minutes he got up and went to talk to a friend in the corner of the classroom. The teacher noticed that Dillon did not put the book back where it belonged so she asked him to come back to the reading nook and place it on the shelf. Dillon agreed and hopped back over to the area, picked the book up, and then placed it on the shelf (operant conditioning, psychosocial development). Dillon then reached down and started playing with his shoe strings as he untied them and then tied them again.
It was time for the children to go outside and play. The student intern asked for all of the children to form a line before they were able to exit the classroom (psychosocial development, classical conditioning). Once the door opened and the children got outside, Dillon ran to the tricycles with one of his friends. They ride around for a couple of minutes and then get Dillon got off of the tricycle and grabbed a ball.
Dillon is bouncing the ball up and down with both of his hands (physical development, gross motor skills). Two other children wanted to play with Dillon. Dillon said, “Let’s roll the ball to each other.” So he pushed the ball to one child and then they passed it to the other and then back to Dillon and this activity continued for a few minutes (psychosocial development, cooperative play).
Dillon stopped playing with the ball and ran to the jungle gym set. He climbed up the steps and found his way to the slide (psychosocial development, gross motor skills). Dillon sits down and quickly goes through the slide. He went one more time on the slide and then he ran to the swing set.
He waited for his turn to use the swing, but once he got on he blurted out, “I’m ready for take off!” he began to swing and started counting how many times he was going back and forth, but only counted up to four times and then he stopped counting (cognitive development, mathematical skills). Dillon got off of the swings and went to the sandbox.
He sat next to two students who were playing with cars together, but he picked up a shovel and started to make a pile of sand. He then grabbed a toy car and pushed the toy car up the sand pile he created while making crashing sounds (psychosocial development, parallel play).
As he was heading back inside he started to point at toys that were left in the sand area and naming them, “there’s a bike, there’s the slide, and there’s the ball!” (cognitive development, fast-mapping).
Once Dillon comes back inside he walks up to the sink, turns the water on, wets his hands, pumps soap, and begins to scrub his hands. He finished washing and drying his hands off so he sits at the lunch tables and he receives juice and crackers. He started saying how he wanted cookies today instead of crackers and began to cry.
As he began to cry the teacher walked over to him and explained that he can not have cookies today, but eventually he will get them. Dillon calmed down after he was talked to (cognitive development, centration). When the snack is placed in front of him he began to act like a puppy by sticking his tongue out and panting as if he could no longer wait to eat (cognitive development, pretend play). He proceeded to eat his snack and talk to the child next to him.
After snack time was over Dillon got up and said, “I need to go potty!” so the teacher guided him towards the bathroom (cognitive development, symbolic thought). Dillon washes his hands after using the bathroom and goes and grabs a race car in the play area. He started to make race car noises and saying, “Vroom vroom.” Dillon then began to talk to himself and began to describe how the car looked, “it’s fast, loud, red” (cognitive development, private speech) he also named the car Speed as he kept referring to it as that name. My observation was complete at this point.
