Observation Of The Early Childhood

Observation of the Early Childhood


        An observation was held in the children'"s wing of Tarrant County Junior

College.  A variety of children between the ages of two to six were observed in

activities ranging from physical and motor  to social and cognitive development.

Specifically I mean that whether it was leadership skills or lack of,  running,

climbing and jumping, drawing and writing, or anything that could fall between,

it has been seen, done and accounted for in the following observation.

     First let's start with the physical and motor development.  Please say

hello to Karligh and Bethany, my first volunteers of the observation.  Both

girls are in the four-year olds.  The first activities under physical and motor

development that I'm going to observe them performing are the large

muscle/gross-motor skills.  The large muscle/gross-motor skills include:

climbing across the monkey bars,  riding bigwheels (or tricycles), and  running

through a  built-in obstacle course on the playground.

     Starting with the monkey bars, it's clearly obvious that Karligh is

physically stronger upperbody-wise than Bethany.  With surprising ease, Karligh

crossed the monkey bars using nothing but her arms to perform this task.

Bethany on the otherhand was shaky and uncertain from the start.  After hanging

from the first bar, she quickly swung her feet over to the side for leg support.

She was able to cross but only with a great deal of assistance from me.

     Karligh also showed mastery in riding the big wheel.  Her speed and

turning ability seemed to surpass anyone else on the playground.  Bethany chose

to ride only after a piece of candy bribery.  Her tricycle skills were somewhat

sluggish but more or less average.  However, once again Bethany was victorious.

     The last large muscle activity was completing the obstacle course.  The

obstacle course involved running up a slide, crawling through a tunnel, crossing

a shaky bridge and then walking along a balance beam.  Karligh ran up the slide

with a considerable amount of effort.  She quickly crawled through the tunnel

and crossed the shaky bridge with little effort.  She crossed the balance beam

more quickly than I'd seen any child do that whole day.  Bethany climbed up the

slide in a time that was a bit quicker than Karligh's.  The crawling through the

tunnel was done quickly and she was first stalled on the shaky bridge.  She

managed to cross the bridge in a modest time but she hit some trouble at the

balance beam.  After slowly completing about ten percent of the travel across

the beam, she turned her feet sideways for the remainder of the crossing, which

took about two minutes.

     The second area in the physical and motor development involves the use

of small muscle or fine motor skills.   For the observation, these skills

include  writing,  and playing the drums (the only two fine motor skills I saw

both children perform).  These children are four years old so when I say writing

I of course am not talking about paragraphs or even sentences.  More simply, my

writing section only  involved writing their names.  Karligh was able to produce

her name on paper in a legibility that was impressive for someone four years of

age.  Bethany too was able to write her name but just not quite as nice as

Bethany.

     After observing the two children playing the drums, I think it's

unlikely for either girl to win a scholarship for college as a percussionist.

Bethany's playing was sporadic and entirely inconsistent but hey, she's only

four.  Karligh's drumming skills were a bit more impressive since she managed to

lay down and keep a beat for a short amount of time.

     In judging overall competence in gross and fine-motor skills, it's

obvious Karligh was better at both, but for most children competence seemed to

lean more on one than the other.  The "strong kids" on the playground who were

the fastest tricycle riders, the highest jumping and so on, seemed to shy away

from more of the finer fine motor skills.  As for the kids that seemed

sign
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