Observing a child is an admirable experience. It is amazing to see how differently children view certain situations compare from adults view. I recently observed three children. A one-year-old girl named Lily, and a three-year-old boy named Alan and a three-year-old girl named Gaby. The two little girls Lily and Gaby are sisters, which had a change in how they interacted with each other. This was a natural observation; the place was a classroom at a family daycare center. The room was decorated as an imaginary park. It contained a pretend kitchen with stocked utensils for the children to play. There were trains, cars, puzzles, books, and many more toys. The children played on a colorful mat in where they jumped and skipped. There was a treasure box inside the classroom where children pretended to play with any furry friends. Time of observation began at 11:00 AM and ended at 11:20 AM. The classroom population consisted of one primary teacher, one teacher’s aide, and eight children ranging from ages 24 months- 5 year old. Throughout the paper, I will be discussing on the three children’s activities. I will be describing their cognitive, physical, emotional, moral, and social characteristics. The three children looked physically on track with their developmental progress in related to weight and height. The observation started when Alan and Gaby were playing with Thomas and friends train sets. While Lily was just observing their interactions because she still had jerky, and uncontrollable movements with keeping her balance with placing the trains on the tracks. This demonstrated the lack in development of fine manipulative skills. During observation, she was found physically comfortable with her environment like roaming around without any physical unbalance. She showed almost all the characteristics of development of gross motor skills. As we discussed in class, cerebellum is the part of the brain associated with balance and control of the body’s movement (Steinberg, Vandell, and Bornstein, 2010, p. 102). Gaby and Alan started to play alongside each other. Parallel play usually involves two or more children interested in the same activity, but the children do not play together, but alongside each other just because they are at the same room (Steinberg et al., 2010, p. 265). Gaby started to avoid distractions and focused on the task at hand. She had all the trains lined up attached by each other because they were magnet trains; which made it easier for Gaby to move them on the wooden railroad tracks. Later, Lily crawled near her sister Gaby and destroyed and threw all of Gaby’s set of trains. Gaby imitate reaction was shocked and did not know why her sister reacted that way towards the trains.
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She maintained a stable reaction towards her sister Lily and told her, “You need to be nice with the toys Lily; toys are for playing not throwing”. It was possible to examine this behavior of Gaby as having a high level of emotional regulation. According to Steinberg et al. (2010, p. 253) emotional regulation is the ability to think constructively about how to cope with feelings. Gaby most effectively has learned to regulate her emotions by observing the teacher what is bad or good behavior towards friends. Children begin to start learning that other people have feelings. Lily crawled away and grabbed attention towards the colorful Legos. Her attention span was easily distracted, which made her crawl around at different activities, but was able to sustain attention to one structured activity for about 2 minutes. Alan is alongside with Gaby playing with Thomas and friends trains. He instead of using the trains and the railroad tracks as their meanings. He used the trains as race cars competing each other for the gold trophy. He screamed, “ Hurry, drive faster! You can’t catch me”. Steinberg et al. (p. 209) define pretend play as, “ make-believe play in which common objects are often used to symbolize other objects”. Pretend key is a big part of a child’s social development. Alan ran towards Gaby’s play area and grabbed a train yelling, “ Give me that, it is mine!”. Gaby who has a high level of emotional regulation told Alan, “ I will give you three of my trains if you give me your blue train”. Alan seemed
She maintained a stable reaction towards her sister Lily and told her, “You need to be nice with the toys Lily; toys are for playing not throwing”. It was possible to examine this behavior of Gaby as having a high level of emotional regulation. According to Steinberg et al. (2010, p. 253) emotional regulation is the ability to think constructively about how to cope with feelings. Gaby most effectively has learned to regulate her emotions by observing the teacher what is bad or good behavior towards friends. Children begin to start learning that other people have feelings. Lily crawled away and grabbed attention towards the colorful Legos. Her attention span was easily distracted, which made her crawl around at different activities, but was able to sustain attention to one structured activity for about 2 minutes. Alan is alongside with Gaby playing with Thomas and friends trains. He instead of using the trains and the railroad tracks as their meanings. He used the trains as race cars competing each other for the gold trophy. He screamed, “ Hurry, drive faster! You can’t catch me”. Steinberg et al. (p. 209) define pretend play as, “ make-believe play in which common objects are often used to symbolize other objects”. Pretend key is a big part of a child’s social development. Alan ran towards Gaby’s play area and grabbed a train yelling, “ Give me that, it is mine!”. Gaby who has a high level of emotional regulation told Alan, “ I will give you three of my trains if you give me your blue train”. Alan seemed