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Running head: DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
Early childhood observation
Shujia Pang
EDPS 250: Fundamentals of early childhood development
Instructor: Moon Yu
December, 8, 2015
Development in early childhood
Background
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Running head: DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
Throughout the fundamentals of early childhood development class, I felt I had
learned many things that I didn’t know before. I would say it was the most amazing
class I took this semester. The development and growth of human beings could be
simple or complex. Children’s emotional development, languages’ formation, social
connections and cognitive development etc, all these stuffs contribute to a complete
human being. After observations of the children, I know how to see a child from
different perspectives and think why he/she will behaves like that. It was a great
progress for me and challenge me to learn more knowledge.
The child
In this class, the first challenge that Moon gave us was to begin my observation to
a specific child and recorded what I saw and learned in the journals. It was on the
children center where I began my observation of this semester. I told the officer that I
would like to observe a child that at least 4 years old, so she introduced a boy called
Emmen to me. He is five years old, with blonde hair, big blue eyes and handsome
face. He regularly wears comfortable pant or jean, either a T-shirt or pullover with
some special logo on it, and sneakers. He was active to play with his playmates and
pretty outgoing. Also, he got much attention from the teachers and always
communicated with them.
Social development
Temperament is a behavioral style that is not looking at the what or why but
rather the influences on children’s behaviors toward individuals and things in their
surroundings, and how this in turn affects the children (Temperament and Parenting.
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Running head: DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
(n.d.)). Concerning Emmen’s temperament, he tends to be extroverted, sociable and
always laughing and active while playing (McDevitt, T., & Ormrod, J, 2013, pg
#443). When it came to the peer relationship of Emmen with the peers, I felt that
Emmen had a mix of “popular” characteristics, which tend to be good communication
skills and signs of leadership potential, and “rejected” characteristics which may show
through aggression for others and having disruptive behavior in class(McDevitt, T., &
Ormrod, J, 2013, pg #579). During the observation he showed his sociableness and
activeness during the games. When they played a game call freezer, the teacher
pointed out a specific person to be a “freezer”. If the freezer touched someone, then
the person must stop and cannot move. Emmen was asked to be a freezer and he
seemed excited and ran to everybody and hugged them intimately. It seemed like
Emmen enjoyed the role of controlling of others.
Emmen has some common signs in two characteristics but may tend to be more
“popular”. It was difficult to classify a person to a specific category and they should
not be defined as well, because a person’s characteristics vary from environment to
growth. Throughout the observation i saw Emmen was not good at controlling his
emotion, and sometimes would be rude to his friends.
One example of how he lost control of emotion was what I saw in the outdoor
room. After every child finish their construction of the “house”, Emmen walked to the
table and pushed all the cups down and he just lied on the table. Then a boy saw his
behavior and watched at me and said: “Oh, he messed up”. After lying a while,
Emmen left and then was back to mess up again. He kicked the cups on the floor and
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Running head: DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
made cups break again and again.
After a while, the teacher asked children to clean out the table. Emmen didn’t
come at first, and I heard a boy shouted Emmen said he made a mess. Emmen walked
to the table and kept kicking the cups and had unpleasant expression on his face. The
teacher told other children to clean up the cups as soon as they could and encouraged
Emmen to help them instead of scolding him. After listening to the teacher’s
reinforcement, Emmen became motivated and full of energy again.
According to what I observed, his achievements were easily to win praise among
the peers and teachers, which motivated him to have more progress in school. I
remember the first I observed him he was building a shelter using different shapes and
