Observation of a Child in a Daycare Setting

Greg was a normal child in all developmental respects; in other words, by observing him, I expected to see some typical behaviors for a child his age. I tried not to think about what I should see, but rather to see what actually occurred, in as objective a manner as possible.

I started my observation on a Monday, as parents dropped off their children in a rush to make it to work on time. Greg's father checked him in with the staff, and Greg quickly headed for his favorite table. He had a cardboard box of juice in his hand, and continued to sip it while his father exchanged some small talk with the teachers. He waved goodbye to his father, enjoying his juice. As other children arrived, Greg got up from the table and mingled with the others. He spent all his time talking to the other boys, rarely pausing to acknowledge the presence of the girls. The girls clustered together on one side of the room, and the boys formed groups on the other.

. . .
One boy in the group wanted to build a high wall. Another boy wanted to hook all the blocks together in a long train. The other two boys in Greg's group were waiting to see what the other three would do first. Greg went to a rack of books and got out several thin story books. He started with a low row of red blocks in the shape of a rectangle, put a book on top, and then proceeded to add some green blocks. He had to settle for small green blocks because by this time the other boys had taken the larger ones. This activity continued for about fifteen minutes. In the end, Greg had produced a fairly successful tower, although he was hampered by not having enough big blocks of the color he needed. He followed the color rules closely, even though his tower suffered in size because of such rules. Many of the other children, in all the groups, disregarded the color rules. They started to make more color "mistakes" as time went on, and colors ran out. The next day, Greg came to school with his shoes tied. I repressed the urge to ask him if he had tied them himself. In any case, the class repeated the same shoe-tying exercise. Today Greg was able to get through the entire process. Later in the morning the teacher split the
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1893
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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