Aim
To observe Brooklyn’s noticeable behavior and habits during the car ride home.
Setting
I observed Brooklyn today, Labor Day, September 2, 2013 between 5.18 pm and 6.18 pm, during our car ride to Eagle River and home. Brooklyn is 7.3 years old. Brooklyn is a Female. She attends 2nd grade at an elementary school in Eagle River. She also happens to be my only sister.
Rationale
Observing Brooklyn in a confined environment will give me an opportunity to learn more about child behavior. The lack of communication on my part prevented me from doing the observation earlier, so I took advantage of the car ride home to complete this assignment. I decided to observe Brooklyn because she is confident and taller than the other children of her class. She enjoys movies and singing and shows this by focusing intently at the DVD player located behind the driver seat and singing occasionally along with the movie. The method of the observation is a written running record of the 2 hours of observation. This method is easy to use; only requiring a pen and paper and not specialist equipment. My mom and her friend sit in the front seats of the pickup truck and I’ve informed them both of this assignment so Laura has agreed to supervise as I concentrate on observing Brooklyn without intervening to direct her actions.
Observation
Brooklyn yawns and continues to stare at the DVD player. In her hands she holds another DVD player that isn’t working. She strokes the DVD player and stares onward at the working screen. Quickly, she puts the non working player in the pouch behind the driver’s seat. Leaning forward in her car seat and using her now free hand, she fast forwards the movie. Stopping the movie at the desired location she laughs and looks out her window at the landscape of Kenai as it passes by. Looking back to the movie, she scratches her lip then yawns and closes her eyes. Picks at her nose and sniffs though her plugged nose. Brooklyn has kept her ear buds in this entire time I’ve been observing her. She does a big stretch in her seat, raising her arms to the roof of the trucks, her legs spread out in front of her and her head tilts slightly to the side and her eyes close for a moment. She then mouths the words of the song the movie is playing. And starts mouthing on the ear bud cord. She seems to yawn a lot as she is sitting. Intrigued by the screen, she touches the characters as they move about the scene in the movie. Brooklyn seems to be purposely doing this. Looking at her nails, she starts to pick at them, taking the edges off piece by piece. She seems to be really intrigued by the ear bud cords and plays with them as she stares at the movie. When she does her next yawn, I realize she must be tired from the night before as my mom told me so. She was sick too. Brooklyn searched for something, picking up my back pack, and checking the floor. Finding my scarf, she seems pleased and smiles. She struggled to get it over her head with the ear buds in and the ear buds take precedence over the scarf. She doesn’t put on the scarf and rather, puts the ear buds back in. I counted, and she stared at the TV for only 9 seconds then throws the scarf on my feet. She yawned and stretches in the next minute, also looking down occasionally to scratch at her fingernail polish. Pushing at her seat belt, she says “Mom! Mom. Mama.” The Mother says “Yes baby?” Brooklyn asks “Where are we?” and the Mother says “We’re almost to Summit Lake” and Laura repeats it, saying sweetie at the end of the line. Brooklyn answers “ok...” Brooklyn continues these movements as she rewinds the same movie over again to her favorite parts. When she found a specific part where the 2 cats were dancing, she started wiggling her bum in her seat and putting her arms up. Her singing couldn’t be classified as words, but you could tell she was following along with the movie. We end at Summit Lake and everyone piles out of the car. Brooklyn opened the door so that 2 old ladies
