The document presents observations of two different classroom environments: a toddler room themed around a circus and an infant room with an underwater theme. It highlights various aspects of each room, including organization, types of play, interactions between children and teachers, and pedagogical approaches to learning and categorization. Key differences noted include the level of independence and verbal skills among the children, with toddlers being more self-sufficient and communicative than the infants.

1. Banks Fullerton
HDFS 3900
April 25, 2023
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Child Observation Reports
Toddler Classroom Environment
The toddler room was the first that I observed. When I walked into the room, there was a
sitting corner with a cushion on a bench and tan bookcases to the left filled with children’s
books. To the right, there cubbies where each child could hang their backpacks. Toys were
scattered all around the area and a fake kitchen set was against the wall next to the bookcases.
The kitchen had a sink, fake food toys, and a fake stove top. The overall theme of the room was
circus. On the cabinets were the children’s names written on popcorn basket folders to put their
artwork in. The floors had scattered peppermint stickers for the children to sit on. There was a
calendar poster on the wall with the days of the week labeled. There were two separate square
tables with tiny chairs for the children to do their art projects. I noticed ten children and three
teachers in the classroom. Two teachers were older, and one was younger. The ratio of girls to
boys was even for the students. Wheels on the bus was playing in the background along with
other songs that would play one after another, but no one really payed attention to the music.
There was a washing station with a dishwasher towards the side-middle area of the room to wash
the children’s water bottles in. I noticed three doors in the room, one led into the hallway, one
led to the bathroom, and one led to the playground outside. Towards the back of the room there
was a colorful rug with numbers on it surrounded by shelves of toys. This is the area where the
children would play. The types of toys were mainly cars, busses, and building toys. There were
windows in the room by the hallway, but they were mirrored on the inside and regular windows
on the outside so that you could see in but not out. The lighting was dim but the windows
towards the outside area led a lot of natural light into the room. The vibe of the room was overall
well-structured and not too crazy. The designated stations for each activity helped with keeping
all of the children in one place and the teachers constantly kept the children busy with activities.
Infant Classroom Environment
The second room I observed was the infant room. The overall theme of the room was
underwater themed. There were fish, jellyfish, streamers, and bubble stickers on the walls.
Numbers up to ten, months, shapes, and colors were also hung on the walls. There were cubbies
in the back of the room for each of the infants’ belongings. A big rug with a ball pit in the center
were the first things I noticed when I walked into the room. Next to the ball pit was a tiny
bookshelf that was level to the infants reach. The books were all very easy reads with only a
couple words on each page with a big picture. In the middle of the room sat two tan, short tables
with no chairs. Towards the back of the room was a crib and a rocking chair. I noticed a mirror
low to the ground that babies could see themselves in when they were crawling around. Lights
were strung around the room but natural light from outside windows overpowered the lights. The
windows to outside had what looked to be blackout curtains for nap time. The windows to the
hallway were mirrored on the inside and regular on the outside so that you could look in but not
out. There were two doors in the room, one that led to the hallway and one to the outside
playground. To the left side of the room was a mini fridge with labeled milk bottles for each
infant and a changing station with a mirror and streamers above it. The toys were mainly musical
toys like toy pianos or stuffed animals that sing. There were no sharp objects or rough edges in
the room. I counted eight infants and two teachers in the room. The teachers were young and
constantly tending to the babies. The feeling of the environment was overall a little chaotic
because of the amount of crying and roaming of the children. I think there should have been a
third teacher to make it easier on the two teachers because they seemed to have their hands full.

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Toddler interactions
All of the children were playing with toys when I walked in the room. Some were
demonstrating parallel play by playing with different toys next to each other and occasionally
making eye contact. Most children practiced pretend play either with the play kitchen, acting like
they were making food or with busses and trucks, talking to themselves and pretending to make
the bus drive. The toddlers would say things like “I made a boat”, or “My bus” when they played
with each other. I noticed some toddlers demonstrate the ability to use mental combinations
when figuring out how block pieces fit together to build a house. Two of the teachers were sitting
in the same area as the children and watched them play as another walked around cleaning up. I
noticed the use of secondary emotions of embarrassment and guilt when the younger teacher got
angry and a child for biting her and the child immediately began to cry and give the teacher a
hug. At one point, The teachers told the kids it was time to color and had easter baskets with
their names on them for them to color. This helps the kids practice their fine motor skills by
attempting to color in the lines using crayons. Most children would just scribble all over the
page. The teachers activated recall memory and practiced categorization by calling out a color
and asking the kids to show them which crayon that was. The teachers also used a form of
conditioning by playing a potty song when it was time to go to the bathroom so that the students
would know when to go. I attempted to go unnoticed in the back of the room and it worked for
the most part. Only one child came over to me and then went back to playing after a minute.
Infant Interactions
The children engaged in a lot of mama/dada talk and cooing. The children were crawling
around most of the time while some that seemed to be slightly more developed would hold onto
bookcases and maneuver their way around, both using their gross motor skills. Most play that I
noticed was independent or with the teacher. There was a lot of exploratory play and primary
circular reactions when the babies would lay down and suck on their toes and some relational
play with banging on toys and dumping them out of buckets. The teacher would use infant-
directed speech and ask questions like, “What is this?” and “do you hear the music?”. There was
a musical toy that would sing the colors that you press on and the teacher would press a color
while placing the infant’s hand on the color as an example of teaching categorization of colors to
the infants. At one point, the teacher sat down to read books to the children but none of them
paid attention and continued to crawl all over her. One infant decided to just put the book in her
mouth. The infants put just about everything they could in their mouths and were never in one
place for more than three minutes at a time. If one child began to cry, more would cry just
because someone else was. The teachers had to be extremely focused on the children at all times
because they would try to climb tables and do things that would potentially hurt themselves. One
child in specific seemed to have developed an attachment to the teacher and threw a fit if she
were not in the teacher’s lap. Another infant seemed to demonstrate the discriminating sociability
stage of Bowlby’s stages of development and attachment because it seems that only his
caregivers would have been able to placate him. The infants had no sense of others and would
accidentally kick or hit each other without realizing. At one point, the teachers opened the fridge
with all of the milk bottles in it and every infant rushed over to the fridge to chug their milk.
They had milk all over their faces and some would even throw their bottles across the room.
When it was time to change diapers, the teachers would sing to the children in order to calm
them and stop them from crying. I attempted to observe from the back of the classroom and go
unnoticed, but the babies seemed to be very fond of a new person in the room. They crawled all
over my feet and starred at me until they were bored.

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Similarities
Some similarities stuck out to me between the toddler and infant rooms. The first was that
both rooms teachers focused on categorization in some form. The infant room practiced
categorization through the use of the teacher placing the infants’ hands on toy that sang colors.
The infants are too young to repeat back the colors, but repetition will help with time. The
toddler room practiced categorization through identifying crayon colors as teachers called out a
color. The toddlers were able to categorize the colors based on what they heard the teachers say.
Another similarity was that both teachers were actively observing the kids to make sure they
were somewhat controlled. The two classrooms shared some of the same toys like cars and
blocks and both had bins and cubbies to store them in. Teachers in both setting tried their best to
entertain the kids with activities like reading to the infants and drawing for the toddlers and spent
most of their time watching the children play with toys. Another similarity was that both rooms
had a theme, toddlers was circus and infants was underwater, to make the classroom environment
fun and appealing to the children. They both used their themes to incorporate fun stickers and
décor around the room. Another similarity was the organization of the two rooms. They both had
a designated play area with a rug, both had a bookshelf, and both had cubbies for each child.
This makes it a lot easier for the teachers to keep everything orderly and tidy. The two
classrooms also had similar lighting with the natural light widows that did not have their curtains
down and the mirrors windows that faced the hallways.
Differences
I noticed more differences than similarities when it came time to compare the two
environments. The first was that all the toddlers seemed to stay confined to one area at a time
while the infants crawled all over the place. It seemed as if the toddlers were easier to control
than the infants because they were able to understand what the teachers were asking of them. The
next thing I noticed was that the teachers in the toddler room spoke to the toddlers as if they were
adults, instructing them to do and not to do things, while the infant teachers used infant-directed
speech. Infants also needed more hands-on care than toddlers because they are not near as self
sufficient as toddlers are. I also noticed that infants were constantly touching all over the teachers
while the toddlers kept their distance unless they needed to go to the bathroom or wanted to
show off their artwork. Infants communicate non-verbally by waving their hands around and
shaking their heads while occasionally cooing. Toddlers on the other hand, could speak broken
sentences and had a sense of self-acquisition. Toddlers could separate themselves from others
and exclaim that they had position of things by making statements like “My bus”. The toddler
room also had less teachers than the infant room which surprised me. The environment felt more
chaotic and stressful with so few teachers in a room with infants that need constant attention.
When it came to playing with toys, infants seemed to partake in mostly relational play while
toddlers practiced pretend play. Infants would bang on their toys and dump them out of the toy
bins while toddlers would push around busses acting like the bus driver and make pretend food
in the play kitchen. The diversity in play types also brought to my attention the difference in
toys. While they shared some similar toys, toddlers mainly built houses and drove pretend cars
while infants preferred to bang on musical toys and coo loudly. When it comes to motor skills,
infants and toddlers practice their skills at different levels. Infants demonstrated the use of gross
motor skills by crawling, picking up their heads, and some even walking. Toddlers practiced
using fine motor skills by coloring their easter baskets and opening cabinets to grab crayons.
The final difference that I noticed was how each set of children reacted to my presence. The
toddlers did not seem to care that I was there while the infants crawled all over me.

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References
Gross, D. (2018). Infancy : Development from Birth to Age 3. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.