Melanie Johnson
April 4, 2013
Dr. Ruth Nelson
Lifespan Development

Child Observation

Observation Notes: (copied from handwritten notes) Child was reading a book but just looking at the pictures. When the teacher sat down to read the book to a few kids, my child wanted to sit on her lap and kind of just pointed and said “lap”, the teacher asked the child what the magic word was and then the child said the full sentence “can I please sit on your lap?” The child stayed on the teachers lap and paid attention for about 5 minutes but then didn’t really seem interested in what the teacher was reading but occasionally got interested whenever the teacher moved or turned a page. The teacher had to stop reading and then the boy went and stood next to kids playing with a puzzle and looked on but did not join or say anything. He then went and sat back down where the teacher had sat and decided he’d read the book on his own, and said to himself out loud, “I will do it myself.” Then looked to another boy and basically made him pay attention to the book. The little boy showed development of fine motor skills because he used the pincer grasp to turn the pages of the book (Berger 138). After that, he started “babbling” fake words with another boy and the boy did it back. Later on, the boy walked into another room and looked at some words on the white board and asked no one in particular, “Who writted this?” which shows that he doesn’t fully understand grammar rules yet. The book defines verb forms to be a part of grammar (Berger 171). He associated how we conjugate other verbs even though he had never been taught the rules. This is typical with over regularizing because since he knew to add –ed to some verbs to make them past tense, he added –ed to all verbs (Lecture). I think that this shows cognitive development because the child was clearly showing that he was learning language skills and different parts of speech. He then proceeded to help with the cots that the teachers were putting away without being asked to, I believe this is an example of him copying the modeled behavior in front of him. Next the boy walked around until he saw the teacher who had been reading the book before – she seemed to be his favorite. They were at a coloring table and he started to grab at a scissors that another boy was using and as soon as the other boy caught him he acted like it never happened. He asked to sit on the teachers lap again and also again forgot to say please and the teacher asked what the magic word was. He got up to walk away and his shoe was half off but he didn’t fix it, he just left it. When no one seemed to want to play with him, he grabbed one of the foam paintbrushes and pretended to paint the things around him – this was an example of pretend play (Berger 270). This action by the boy showed his fine motor abilities to an extent. I noticed that the boy was very controlled in his actions with the brush. After about 2 minutes of that he went back to the teacher and she was asking a little girl math questions, he then proceeded to answer the questions even though they weren’t for him. Over the entire time I was observing at the CDC, the little boy followed around the same woman teacher. I think that this is showing that the boy is possibly a little behind in psychosocial development, he didn’t really seem interested in the other kids – only what he wanted and what the teacher was doing. The last thing I observed at the CDC was when he had to go to the bathroom, there was already a teacher and 3 little girls in there but the door was open and the boy went in, looked in the mirror and smiled, and then pulled his pants down in front of everyone, he was very comfortable being naked in front of anyone who was there. This goes against what the textbook says about how children like to be with children similar to themselves (Berger 269).

Discussion: * Did you manage to keep all description of intent out of