Observation
(by Abi Shotton, Bright Sparks Montessori Pre-school)
The child I have been observing is a 3 &1/2 year old boy who is originally from India. He has only lived in the U.K. for 4 months (moved to the U.K. in December, 2014) and only speaks his mother-tongue, ‘Malayalam’, at home. He has been attending another nursery since January 2015 so the English that he currently speaks is what he’s acquired through learning and play at his previous setting. He joined our setting on April 13th 2015.
Day One : This child is a very confident, happy little boy. He’s settled in very well this morning and was not at all distressed when Mum left him. He has shown great interest in playing with the sand tray and water-pouring activities. He didn’t need showing what to do with these activities as he was confidently doing it himself correctly.
He enjoyed playing on the computer and particularly liked the music that the games played.
He enjoyed painting a picture and said ‘for Mummy and Daddy’ as he painted it.
He has been very good at taking turns with other children and understood that when the timer for the computer was finished, it was someone else’s turn.
He was very confident to go outside at playtime and didn’t feel the need for me to accompany him.
He enjoyed transferring the glass beads from one pot to the other. He didn’t need to be shown how to do this activity and he also held the tongs correctly.
He understands that he has to put away an activity before getting a new one out. He also understands that he has to push his chair in when he’s not returning to his place.
He very much enjoyed riding the tricycle at outdoor break time and could pedal backwards but used his feet to go forwards.
He enjoyed ‘circle time’ (our group lesson) where we talked about the life-cycle of a chicken and how a chick hatches from an egg. He also really enjoyed singing and when he was asked what song we should all sing, he said ‘incy wincy spider’. He was then asked if there was a song that ‘he’ wanted to sing and he said ‘twinkle twinkle little star’. He actually stood up and attempted to sing this, by himself, in front of the class. He was familiar with most of the well-known nursery rhymes and joined in with most of the actions.
Day Two : He came into school beaming today and actually asked his Mum to go.
He’s been enjoying transferring water from one pot to another using a pipette. He did need to be shown how to do this but immediately wanted to do it himself once he understood what to do.
He demonstrates very good hand/eye co-ordination and concentration.
He was enjoying exploring with shapes and was seeing how high he could stack the squares. He counted ‘1...2...3...4...’, up to 10. He then pointed to one of the squares and said ‘this is blue’.
He enjoyed outdoor play with water today, pouring water from one container to another.
He sat outside and played a game nicely with another little boy. They were sat opposite each other and were twisting coloured screws into a coloured screw board.
He enjoyed cutting with scissors and cut lines into a piece of paper, using his right hand. Although he was holding the scissors correctly, he was twisting his hand so that he was cutting up-side down. He was shown the correct position and continued to cut this way. He then enjoyed sticking little pieces of paper onto his sheet with a glue stick. He took a real liking to the glue stick and said ‘for home, for home’ and tried to put it in his pocket. I had to explain that things at the pre-school were for all the children to use ‘at’ the pre-school.
He sat and coloured a piece of paper and held the pen correctly, using the tri-pod grip.
He uses his right hand when drawing, painting and cutting.
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