The document summarizes a lab report observing early childhood development in a preschool classroom. A 4-year-old girl, R, demonstrated appropriate physical, cognitive, and socioemotional milestones for her age. Physically, she showed refined motor skills like using a pencil grip. Cognitively, she engaged in pretend play and showed egocentrism. Socioemotionally, she displayed different types of play and used verbal aggression when upset. The report also observed other children exhibiting expected developmental behaviors in these domains, such as running, drawing, pretend play, sharing, and aggression, consistent with theoretical frameworks in the textbook.

1. LAB REPORT 3: EARLY CHILDHOOD 1
Lab Report 3: Early Childhood
Elizabeth Rose Duignam
University of Georgia

2. LAB REPORT 3: EARLY CHILDHOOD 2
Part I
In the Preschool room of the Child Development Lab at McPhaul, I observed a young,
four-year old girl, who we will call R. Throughout my 10 short minutes watching her every
move, I was able to identify and analyze concepts from Berk and Meyers’, Infants, Children, and
Adolescents textbook. R demonstrated appropriate milestones in the areas of physical, cognitive
and socioemotional development.
Physically, R completes actions that show she is on path with what normal research
suggests for her age. Her gross motor skills, which are actions that help a child get around their
environment, and fine motor skills, which are smaller movements, are visibly refined. I see this
by observing her perfected pincer grasp, which is when a child picks up an object using their
fingers (Berk & Meyers, 2016). R uses the pencil grip to hold a marker and color on a piece of
paper. According to Berks and Meyers, children acquire skills gripping a pencil by ages 3-4,
therefore she is on track (2016). R is also able to open and close the marker cap very easily and
shows no problem completing fine motor skills like this one. She uses her gross motor skills
when she holds her artwork in her palms and carefully walks it over to the drying rack. I see that
she can use a combination of fine and gross motor skills, simultaneously, which allows me to
determine she has not fallen behind in her physical development.
In terms of cognitive development, it is apparent that R is in Piaget’s Preoperational
stage. The Preoperational stage (2-7yrs) is the second stage of Piaget’s discontinuous, cognitive
development theory. It is distinguished by representational activity and its biggest limitation is
egocentrism. Egocentrism is when kids neglect to understand that other people around them have
different viewpoints than their own (Berk & Meyers, 2016). I was able to see R illustrate

3. LAB REPORT 3: EARLY CHILDHOOD 3
egocentrism when she told her friend that her way of putting glue on the piece of paper was the
only way to do it. R was not able to realize that her friend does not need to do things exactly the
same as her for it to be correct. Piaget also believes that make believe play is essential for kids in
this stage to continue to learn and grow (Berk & Meyers, 2016). R was found to be playing make
believe multiple times. When R and her friend ran over to get water, I explicitly heard R say,
“How about we pretend that we’re drinking juice?”. She also asks her friend if they can pretend
to be other ages than what they truly are. This kind of play benefits young children by allowing
them to become more socially competent (Berk & Meyers, 2016).
Socioemotionally, R responded with aggression and demonstrated many different
versions of “play” that Erikson believes is pertinent to his stage of initiative vs. guilt. Associative
play is when children do separate activities but they talk and exchange toys; they are not working
towards a common goal (Berk & Meyers, 2016). R showed this when she was coloring next to
her friend. Although they were both coloring, they were not working together for one thing, they
were working on their own. I know that this was associative play because they were talking and
pointing to each other and they would also pass the pink marker back and forth. Cooperative play
is when children work together to achieve a common goal (Berk & Meyers, 2016). When R and
her friend accidentally drew with a marker on the table, the both of them rubbed their hands on it
to try and clean it off. They were working towards a common goal simultaneously: erasing the
marker. With cooperative play comes intersubjectivity, which is when two people work towards
something and they have an understanding of what the end goal must be (Berk & Meyers, 2016).
R and her friend were able to find ground for communicating to complete the simple task.
Aggression is also a very common action that a preschooler displays. Verbal aggression is when

4. LAB REPORT 3: EARLY CHILDHOOD 4
someone uses their words to harm someone else (Berk & Meyers, 2016). R’s friend tries to steal
the marker from her when they are coloring and R is not ready to share yet so she yells “NO!”
very loudly. This is a way for her to express her emotions. Overall, R appears to be
developmentally conforming to the physical, cognitive and socioemotional milestones that our
society has placed on four year olds.
Part II
Physical development for preschoolers is characterized by many milestones in
weight and height, but also by the ability to move and use objects around oneself. A gross motor
skill is a skill that helps a child appropriately move around in their specific environment (Berk &
Meyers, 2016). In the simplest terms, children all over the classroom were running from side to
side to find toys and keep up with their friends. When the teacher told a young boy to use the
restroom, he started running over to it. This is very, very different from infants’ gross motor
skills because younger children are only able to pull themselves up and walk very wobbly.
Preschoolers can run very smoothly without the risk of toppling over like an infant would.
A fine motor skill is an action that is characterized by smaller movements. A child would
be using smaller muscles to achieve a fine motor skill (Berk Meyers, 2016). Two young girls
were sitting at a table playing with magnetic drawing boards and they were able to pick the
stylus up and draw pictures. This type of action differs from an infant’s fine motor skills because
they are more likely to only be able to pick up food and place it in their mouth while with a little
bit of trouble. Infants are not able to steadily hold a pencil-like object and draw like a
preschooler can. By preschool age, physical developmental milestones include doing things like
running smoothly, galloping, using a fort effectively and copying shapes (Berk & Meyers, 2016).

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These are all actions that I was able to observe in the classroom and distinguish from younger
kids.
Cognitive development incorporates many different aspects of a child such as the ability
to play pretend, develop language and grammar skills and to remember tasks and information. If
a child makes strides in all of these areas, they are correctly developing with their age group.
Animism is one of the limitations to Piaget’s Preoperational stage. It is when children between
the ages of 2-7 years old believe that objects that are innate have the ability to think and feel
(Berk & Meyers, 2016). I saw this in the preschool room when two boys were holding up
puppets. One child was playing with grumpy cat and the other was playing with a donkey
puppet. I could see them moving the mouths of the puppets and making them talk. The boy with
the donkey put the face of the puppet into a cup of water. I can infer that the young boys were
displaying animism because they were thinking that the puppets could talk to each other. Also,
one child thought that his donkey was thirsty, so he put his mouth to the cup.
Scaffolding is generally known as instruction given by a caregiver in which they meet the
current level of performance that the specific child needs (Berk & Meyers, 2016). A little boy
stole a toy car from his friend who was sitting next to him and he walked up to the teacher and
said, “I want to play with the car”. However, the teacher saw him steal it from his classmate so
she said “Is it yours?”. This type of strategic questioning is known as scaffolding. The teacher
knows that the young boy is learning how to share, so instead of getting mad at him for stealing a
toy, she guides him with her kind words to make him understand that his action is wrong without
making him feel completely ashamed.

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Language is extremely important for the cognitive development of a young child. It
allows them to be able to talk about the schemes and concepts that they see in their heads.
Pragmatics is when someone is able to socially respond in a conversation. It means smiling,
making eye contact or waiting their turn to speak (Berk & Meyers, 2016). I was able to see
pragmatics in a conversation when a girl was talking to a young boy who had just fallen and was
sitting on an ice pack. She walked up to him and asked him what was wrong. The boy took some
time, but then he eventually replied and said that he had fallen so he needed ice. Then the girl
expressed a sad face. She was showing pragmatics in her language skills because she was able to
pause and wait for her friend to respond after she asked a question and she also looked sad when
he said he had hurt himself. Overregulation is the term used when young children apply
grammatical rules to words that are not applicable (Berk & Meyers, 2016). Overregulation shows
that children are learning how to properly speak. When I was observing a few kids sitting at the
table for lunch time, a little boy was with two girls who looked the same and he said, “You guys
are two twinsies”. This is overregulation because he did not realize that the word twins is already
plural and that he did not need to say “two” before “twinsies”.
Erikson’s Initiative vs. Guilt stage is when children resolve a conflict through play. They
are able to make decisions on their own and explore the world openly. Kids have a sense of
purpose and they discover which actions they can complete with the help of adults and others
(Berk & Meyers, 2016). I observed this when three or four kids were in the back corner with a
teacher. They were walking on top of big wooden blocks that they set up. The kids were all
playing a game together, however the teacher was helping them place the wooden blocks where
they wanted them. This kind of assistance from a teacher is described as being in the Zone of

7. LAB REPORT 3: EARLY CHILDHOOD 7
Proximal Development for the kids. The Zone of Proximal Development is a place where kids
can only complete actions with the help of a more experienced caregiver (Berk & Meyers, 2016).
The kids were able to play on their own without the teacher making them feel guilty for not
being able to correctly place the blocks down.
Aggression was a behavior that I saw a lot of, which makes a lot of sense for children in
preschool. Aggression is when outbursts occur because of emotions that a child feels (Berk &
Meyers, 2016). More specifically, verbal aggression is very apparent in this classroom. Verbal
aggression is when a person harms others by using their words to tease or name call (Berk &
Meyers, 2016). There was a time during my observation when a few kids were all on the carpet
playing with musical toys. One little girl really enjoyed improperly hitting her drumsticks on
instruments that didn’t require drumsticks. She walked up to a classmate and hit his tambourine
and he responded by yelling “NO!” at her. This is a form of verbal aggression in which he used
his harsh words to hurt another person. I also watched physical aggression happen. Physical
aggression is when someone hurts another person by physical injury (Berk & Meyers, 2016). A
girl and boy had just finished using the restroom and the boy was washing his hands first. I guess
she decided that it was her turn, so the little girl shoved him with her shoulder to move him out
of the way. This kind of malicious action is obviously physical aggression. Prosocial behavior is
acting in a way that is going to benefit someone else, without wanting anything in return (Berk &
Meyers, 2016). During snack time, I heard a little boy asking for another apple slice. His teacher
was not paying attention and did not hear him so the little girl next to him gave him one of her
slices. This type of behavior was not benefitting the girl because she was not sharing for her
teacher to see, she was just sharing to be nice to her friend. Actions like these are what continue

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to allow a young preschooler to develop into a normal, kind human being. Socio-emotional
improvements and strides are what help young children develop initiative and emotional
regulation for the rest of their lives.

9. LAB REPORT 3: EARLY CHILDHOOD 9
References
Berk, L. & Meyers, A. (2016). Infants, Children, and Adolescents. (8th ed.). Boston, MA:
Pearson.