Child observation Essay

All the children at Gerber Preschool are between the ages of 3 and 4 years old and mainly consist of lower to lower middle class Hispanic and Caucasian families. Mya is a small statured 3 year old Hispanic Caucasian female, with light olive-toned skin, long brown hair, and large brown eyes. Toby is an average statured 4 year old Caucasian male, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, short brown hair. Toby and Mya both seem to be in good physical heath. Jesus is a slightly above average statured 4 year old Hispanic male, with dark brown skin, short spikey black hair and brown eyes. Spanish is Jesus primary language at home but is encouraged to speak English at school. Mya, Toby, and Jesus all appear to be right handed and in good physical heath. Description of Setting: The observation session began on Tuesday May 7, 2013, at approximately 10:00 AM in Gerber, California; the preschool has 2 adults and 8-10 kids. All the children were in line waiting to exit out the back door to the playground. The playground featured a large fenced off area with a large grassy area and the class flower bed covered by a large shade tree, large cement slab with tricycles and tetherball, play house, sand box, and large gym set. There is an assortment of activities available for the children to play including: kickball, bubble buckets, tetherball, hopscotch, jump rope, soccer, etc. Primary Observation: Start time 10:00 AM on Tuesday, May 7, 2013 10:00- Toby impatiently stands in line telling Jesus â€Å"I’m going to be the first one on the playground† Jesus yells â€Å"No I am! † two people behind them Mya and Jessica are holding hands laughing and whispering in each other’s ears. Everyone is squirming about unable to sit still waiting for the go ahead to head outside. 10:05- The children rush outside onto the grass and prepare for story time. Jesus screams â€Å"Rainbow Fish† once he sees the book in the teacher’s hands. Mya excitingly says â€Å"I want a rainbow fish† to Jesus, he in return says â€Å"I want one too. † All the children sit down so the teacher could begin the story. 10:10- During the story Toby was unable to see the book and yells to his teacher â€Å"Aren’t you going to face it to me. He continues to be disruptive getting up and interrupting the teacher. Toby is very energetic and begins to get restless playing with whatever is within his reach. He starts disturbing Jessica until the teacher asks him to sit back down and stop disturbing others Toby than sits back down and begins whining that he is unable to see the book again. 10:15- At the end of the story the teacher asks the children â€Å"Why did Rainbow Fish give away his scales? † Jesus immediately stood up and said â€Å"Because he was alone and wanted friends† Toby says â€Å"Now he has no more rainbow scales. † 10:20- The class is now on free time for the rest of the day. All the children immediately take off running for the playground; Toby and Jesus immediately go for the tricycles. While Mya went straight for the flower bed to dig with the shovel and buckets that were there. 10:25- Jesus, Toby, and another little boy raced back and forth across the pavement a couple times but quickly lost interest in the tricycles and more interested in what the other children were doing. 10:30- Toby ran over to where Mya was and Mya said â€Å"Let’s play house† the children discussed where they would live and what part they would act out. Toby excitedly screamed â€Å"Ok, I’m the daddy†, and Mya says â€Å"I’m the mommy†, and two other little boys Gauge and Angel are the sons. 10:35- Mya runs over to the play house and begins putting sand in a bucket and acts as if she is cooking while Toby makes the fire. Jesus walks over and picks up Mya’s bucket, she instantly got mad at Jesus and hit him. Jesus left crying and she said â€Å"He didn’t say please, so leave me alone. † She than stuck her tongue out at him, another girl by the name of Jessica told the teacher. The teacher told Mya that if she couldn’t talk nice and share she would have to choose another area to play. 10:40- After the incident Toby moves over to a bucket of bubbles with 3 wands, colored green, purple, and pink. Toby and Jesus blow bubbles together. No bubbles were coming out of Toby’s wand, so he blew with more force. Toby takes his wand to the teacher. He brought his wand back, dipped it in the bubble bucket and flung it out. 10:45- Mya gets the purple bubble wand and Toby goes over to Mya and tries to take it away from her. Mya begins to make sounds of being upset but soon gets over it when the other children begin popping the bubbles and she joins in squealing and laughing. 10:50- The teacher blows her whistle to signal to the children it’s time to clean up and go inside. Mya quickly grabs the bubble bucket yelling â€Å"I got the bubbles† while Jesus and Toby raced to the door to line up without picking up anything. 10:55- All the children walked back into the class room and were instructed to sit at a table. Toby got up from the table and a little boy named Gauge took his seat. He tried to get the attention of the teacher but she was busy with another child, so he pulled Gauge by the shirt and begin to cry saying â€Å"get out my chair† Gauge refused to move. Once the teacher finally got to them they had already started to tussle a little. Toby and Gauge were both placed in time out but first they had to apologize to one another. 11:00- End of observation. Analysis: Gender identity is the perception of oneself as male or female (pg. 252). All three children show gender identity when they discuss the roles of one another to play house, with Mya being the mother, Jesus the father, and Gauge and Angel as the sons. Mya also displays gender identity when she pretends to cook while playing house as well. On page 254 cooperative play is described as children playing with one another taking turns, playing games, etc. Mya, Toby, and Jesus demonstrate cooperative play as well as make-believe play throughout their game of house they coordinated ideas together as a group. Cooperative play is also apparent when the children play with the bubbles. The text on page 264 states that aggression is an intentional injury or harm to another person. Mya showed aggression by hitting Jesus when she became angry at him. Toby also displayed aggression when he grabbed Gauge in an attempt to get his chair back. In sum all of the children seem to be displaying appropriate social and emotional behavior and skills typical of their age.