1. Kiana Wiley
Jenna Fernandez
8 March, 2016
Child Observation Paper
While I was at the SDSU Children’s Center, my partner and I both visited the preschool
section of the center. My first child left before my hour of observation was complete so I had to
begin observing another child. I will describe the two children in this observation as “1” and “2”.
Child 1 was a red-haired boy that was about the age of 4 years-old and the average height
of the children that were outside. Child 2 was a girl that was about 4 years-old with curly
light-brown hair and green/hazel eyes. The children were leaving to play outside at the time after
being inside the classroom setting when we arrived. The layout was as follows from a bird's-eye
view after exiting the door to the yard. There was a storage area to the left and further to the left
there was a seating area. To the right of the classroom entrance there was a bench and next to
that there were three chalk boards in front of a sink, next to the wall. A bit farther right of that
there was a large “dream-catcher” stringed object hanging from the rooftop. In front of the
stringed object there was a water area with toy boats and other toys that the children could play
with. There were a few flowers in front of the water play area, and coming along the fence
separating the other play area for the next classroom was a small, white, circular track most
likely for trikes. The middle of it was filled with sand and trucks, outlined with medium sized
rocks. The fence parallel to the building had a spot with dirt and rocks. Walking a bit along that
fence there is a large sandpit with a truck structure that is open underneath and has a bed. Finally,

2. a few feet from the truck, outside of the sandpit, there is a table before another fence cuts off the
play are for another classroom’s section.
Through the period of time that I was at the children’s center, I observed two different
children because one of them left mid observation. Child 1 was mostly interactive, but did spend
some time alone. The child stayed at the front of the truck play structure and talks to two other
boys loudly. They do all participate in pretend play. The boy also has a wide range of
imagination because of the dialogue with the other boys. While playing with a ball in the sandpit,
Child 1 inquires to the other boy, “Can I have it?”. The observee also runs around the sandpit
with string and sticks in his hair. Afterward, he climbs back on to the truck structure on to the
bed and plays with about 5 other children. I notice that the child has no shoes on, which doesn’t
bother him. Child 1 then moves underneath the play structure where he is not alone once again. I
observe that he is simply covering up sand with more sand while crouching down in the sand. He
changes his attention quickly after to the red and green ribbons that are wrapped in the string on
his head. While Child 1 is walking around, he exclaims, “I am Iron Man!” and shoots toy blasters
with his hands. After a few seconds, he begins to look at something that is in a girl’s hand before
taking the head piece off. A few minutes later, Child 1 crawls into the sand before hearing the
teachers say that it is time to clean up. He then puts on the left shoe, that had velcro, on first
before the right shoe. This shows that he is quick to follow directions. There was no evident
aggressive behavior from this child in my observation.
Child 1 left, so I began to observe Child 2, who was less communicative with the other
kids, which resulted in less group compostion, but she did play near them and spoke phrases
occasionally. She first played near the rocks before going over to the sand pit to pick up the

3. broom and sweep the sand back into the sand pit. In a short dialogue that she has with a care
provider, it is evident that she can make coherent sentences. After a moment, Child 2 climbed on
to the truck play structure and was an active observer from on the truck. She gets told to come
down from off the truck before she hurts herself and is brought down, so she finds a new place to
play. She wants to explore other areas and gets together a bowl of sand to bring to two other
girls. Even though she was told to get down, she gets back on the truck structure after a moment.
Then, she rotates her body to face the other children sitting down in the “driver” and “passenger”
seats. She occasionally interacts with the group of people she is standing next to before jumping
down. Child 2 goes to sit underneath the truck with a group of other children but quickly gets up
after a moment to walk around the “race track”. She abruptly starts to sing a song from“Frozen”
loudly and waves her arms a small amount. As she is walking, she commands a girl to do
something that was unclear to my ears and the other girl simply says, “Don’t talk to me like
that.” Child 2 goes on with her business and stomps on a piece of cardboard that was placed in
between the sandpit and the “race track”. She continues to sing while walking around with her
shoes off, even though it has been clean-up time for a while now. To me, it was evident that most
of the other kids are already putting on their shoes and are getting everything cleaned up as told.
Child 2 is observed walking over to the chalkboard and singing in front of it. Lastly, I observed
that Child 2 has difficulty when putting on her shoes and begins to cry, most likely from
frustration, and needs assistance. She quickly stops crying after they are on and soon is reunited
with her parent and sibling, whom she climbs on the back of. She tells her parent that someone
hit her in the head but when questioned if she told her teacher, she says “no”. Like Child 1, there
was no aggressive behavior that occurred in the observation period.

4. There were distinct differences and certain similarities between my partner’s observed
child and my own. My partner had only one child that she observed and they were a girl who was
very talkative, very energetic, determined, intuitive, and observant. She categorized her as
imaginative because she comes up with certain objects, such as mailbox, out of things such as
tables. She also took her pretend rope to retrieve her pretend paper. She was called determined
because she was trying to find Superman right from the start of her getting outside. Her child
began to initiate a conversation with her and became comfortable the more she talked. She then
wanted to play ball and says, “Throw the ball back.” When she did interact with people it was
with the volunteers and Jenna, which is no one similar to her age. Jenna also observed that the
child was always “content and happy” even when no one was playing with her. Her child also
helped the volunteer clean up when it was time without being asked to do so. Jenna reasoned that
everything the child did was for a reason, which was different from the other children who did
things aimlessly, such as kicking random water bottles. The child throughout the observation
period continued to come up to us both and start a conversation. She shared with us about how
she was named and other facts about her. She wa very interactive but did seem as if she looked
for other things to talk about. She described popcorn as “it would pop”. Lastly, Jenna observed
that even when the group got together when it was time to clean up, she stayed to herself and
continued to walk around. She only sat with the other group of children when she was instructed
to do so.
Unlike my Child 1, Jenna’s child did not know her left from her right, which was evident
when she was given directions to find “Superman”. This was also evident because her shoes
were on the wrong foot the entire observation, and she doesn’t have a problem with it. She later

5. is told by one of the volunteers that they are on the wrong foot, which prompts her to switch
them. Another difference from Child 1 was that she was a girl. She was not interactive with
people her own age and was very independent from the groups of other children, which was
similar to Child 2. Neither Child 1 or Child 2 was as observant of their surroundings as the child
that Jenna observed. All the children that were observed had a wild imagination or created
storylines for themselves. The only child that was not good with directions was Child 2, who
continued to play and walk around without putting her shoes on even though it was time to clean
up. The child that my partner observed did not play on the truck structure, which is a difference
from both of the children that I observed.
From this experience, I learned that each individual child is different from the next,
whether that was influenced by the children that they play with or their family. Although this
may be true, there are some consistent attributes through all the children. Many children are
participating in pretend play at this age and creating story-lines. They are also very observant,
curious, and will not stop themselves from saying what they are thinking. They also interrogate if
there is something that interests them. Some children, on the other hand, keep to themselves and
do not communicate much with other children. These children are not necessarily unhappy, but
are content being by themselves. The behaviors that are observant in childhood may reflect how
they will be later in life, more reserved or more extroverted. It is hard to characterize a child
simply from one observation because the behavior on one day could be different from the next
day. This experience enhanced my ideas of young children because it showed me they are fun to
interact with as well as have a conversation with. They are precious and fragile, but they are also
very intelligent at this age which is surprising to me. They understand more than many people

6. give them credit for. I say they are fragile because it seems as though this is an age where
children are very impressionable and can be molded to think or act a certain way, so words have
to be chosen wisely. I believed before that they were just carefree children that had no worries or
personal objectives, but they are learning every day and don’t even know that they have so much
potential to be amazing in life.