Child Observation Report

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For this project, I observed my mother's preschool class and the three children which she baby-sits on weekends. 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 m...

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...y 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.

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