Observation Portfolio 

Observation #1 part 1- Mrs. Kilmer’s 4 year old playtime observation video:

 

For my first observation I did it on a video I found from YouTube.com. This video is based off Mrs. Kilmer’s four years playtime in her Pre-School classroom. This video was approximately 20 minutes long. This video included the children in the classroom and mainly focused on a four year old girl and boy who seemed like they were having a little trouble interacting with the other children. 

Anecdotal:

 

This observation was for the video of Mrs. Kilmer’s four-year-old playtime observation video. There was a girl into eh video who was dressed up in a princess costume. The camera focused a lot on her throughout the observation video. She played a lot by herself throughout the video, maybe she was shy and did not want to play with her other classmates. Yet, she was very comfortable when the teacher would come over to see how she was doing. The rest of the students in this classroom were playful and hyper most of the video. You could see them roughhousing in the background most of the time. The teacher and her assistant had trouble keeping them in line most of the time. They ran around a lot from one end of the room to another. After a while the camera focuses on a little boy in a navy blue sweatshirt. He also likes to play by himself. At one point he goes to play with the little girl in the princess dress up dress. I think they might know each other well, like they are neighbors or something and they get a long pretty well when they started to play. This kind of play this boy and girl are going through could be concerning for the teacher because usually a four year old will play with the rest of the class. Four year olds also tend to be rough housing most of the time they play and have a difficult time listening to their teacher.

The way these four year olds are acting in this classroom setting is normal for these two children because this is the time in a young child’s life when they start to build friendships. And when the children start to engage by talking back and forth with each other, this is a good thing because their endless chatter will build bonds and connections between the two to build a long lasting friendship. I also chose to use the Anecdotal record, and I think this is the most useful of the observation methods because the Anecdotal record goes more into depth about a child’s behavior in a setting were they are surrounded by other children and need to know how to react with one another. I would definitely use this type of method when I work with kids in the future to learn more about the behaviors of different kinds of kids, and to learn about kids more.

 

Frequency Count:

Running-     **

Talking-       ***

Screaming-    **

Playing-       * (all the time!)

Rough-housing-  ***

Dressing up-     *

Coloring-

Crawling around-   *

Play cooking-      **

Throwing things-  *