Child Study. I am doing my child study on an 11 month old little girl called Sapphire

by zoebrownnnn (student)

Introductory Visit

I am doing my child study on an 11 month old little girl called Sapphire. She is half three quarters white and a quarter Asian, so she has a light tan coloured skin. She has a lot of hair, which is dark brown and curly. She has big eyes which are also dark brown. When she was born she weight 6lb 11oz and was born two weeks early. Although being born slightly early she was healthy and still is now.

She lives in a six bedroom semi detached house in the Sutton area with her mum and her Nan and her aunty and her children. She also interacts with another child who is a few months older than herself, they are very close friends and play alongside each other. She has a habit of pulling his hair and sometimes when she plays she doesn’t like to share.

She took her first steps at 9 months and now walks very well. She can say words like mama and papa and can answer yes and no to various questions although im not sure weather she actually understood what I was saying to her. She can hold her own food and feed herself well, and she can also hold her bottle whilst drinking milk. She is very affectionate, she likes to give lots of kisses and cuddles. She’s an outgoing child; as soon as I came into her house she was smiling and laughing. She goes to a nursery school while her mum goes to college and this has defiantly helped her development as I can tell she is already ahead with some of her milestones. She is very confident and enjoys playing with her toys. She tends to put a lot of things in her mouth and grab at things which she isn’t allowed. She is sociable and likes to meet new people. Sometimes when she doesn’t get to play with something she throws a temper tantrum, which she soon calms down from. She understands when she is in trouble and will stop acting naughty when her mum tells her to stop or when her mum makes a noise that makes her listen or interests her.

Sapphire is very developed for her age.

I know this because I researched the milestones of an 11 month old baby and it says that all 11 month olds should be able to (mastered skills)…

Say "mama" and "dada" to the correct parent

Play patty-cake and peek-a-boo

Stand alone for a couple of seconds

around furniture

Half of 11 month olds can (emerging skills)…

and simple instructions

Puts objects into a container

A few 11 month olds can (advanced skills)…

Says one besides "mama" and "dada"

Stoops from standing position

I copied this information from-

Sapphire can do all of the above, mastered, emerging and advanced skills and more. She can do what 12 month old babies are expected to do, she can imitate others, and if you show her an action she will try and copy you. She can walk properly now very well and can say a few words other than mama and dada or at least tries to. She likes to scribble as she has a set which you fill the pen up with water and put it on the drawing pad and it makes different patterns depending on what you draw. She can throw and kick a ball, and dances to music. Some of these things are extremely advanced skills for an 11 month old as things like throwing and kicking a ball are going into the 17 month old milestones.

Plan for visits.

Plan for visit one.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Plan for visits.

Plan for visit one.

For my first visit I have decided to just have a casual visit playing with her toys. This will show me her overall physical development and how ahead or behind she is of her milestones. It will also show me her social, intellectual and emotional development. Her social development will be shown by the way she reacts to me when I come to her house and if she allows me to play with her without crying. Her intellectual development will be shown by the way she plays with the toys and if she can make different noises and sounds. Her emotional development will be shown when we play with the teddies as babies can get very attached to a teddy they like the most, this is an example of her emotional development.

For this visit I will need to ask her mum if we can play with some of Sapphires toys and use her teddies. The aim of this visit is to see her overall development but mostly her physical development, the way she holds things, how she walks and sits, the way she interacts with different people and how she reacts to different noises. I expect to get all of the above information but it really depends on the kind of mood she is in when the day comes.

Visit one.

I went to visit Sapphire on Tuesday 4th January in the evening time.

She is 11 months old.

When I first walked into Sapphires home, she was smiling at me and very sociable. She was happy and laughing, I didn’t expect this as she had been at nursery all day and I expected her to be miserable and tired, this shows she has a lot of experience with socializing with others and showed she is a very energetic. She was the complete opposite of what I thought she would be like and as soon as we got to her house she had toys out and she was playing with them and walking around.

She had one toy which was a ball with buttons on it that were shaped as different animals, when you pressed these buttons, they would say things such as ‘im a cat’ and ‘im a chicken’ it also had a part in the middle of the ball that was star shaped and when you pressed it a pink elephant came out and started playing music. This was good for Sapphires intellectual development as the noises talking about the different animals and the pictures combined would have showed her the different animals and what they were called. She also had a toy fire engine that when you press the button down it makes the fire engine noise and zooms across the floor, this kind of toy will help with her physical development, as she tried to run after it and pick it up. With this fire engine toy she would also pick it up and press the button herself as she enjoyed the sound it made and it made her laugh.

She did enjoy dancing whilst I was visiting her, although she would only dance to certain music. She was climbing on the furniture and was trying to climb down on to the floor by herself but her mum was worried she may hurt herself and didn’t allow her to climb of by herself.

She expressed the interest to draw which may suggest she enjoys creative play. She came over with the drawing pad in one hand and she was holding the pen in between her fist, this is an example of her fine motor skills. Also she was picking up and holding on to small objects which is an example of her fine motor skills as well. This has given me an idea for one of the other visits as I have now learnt something she enjoys.

I was playing peek a boo with her which she found very entertaining and she even tried to do it back to me, this shows good social skills as she was interacting with me and wanted to join in.

She was sitting with me whilst I did an action and I didn’t expect her to do it back to me but when I did the first action which was a hand and mouth action she picked it up straight away and started imitating me. She tried to imitate me when I did the second action. This took a bit longer but she soon got the hang of it after a few tries. She also imitated me when I made a hand gesture to her mum and I weren’t even doing it to Sapphire. When she did this action she lifted her hands up like when you’re saying I don’t know to someone. She also said a word when she was doing this gesture which was ‘no’ which is also very good for an 11 month old; this is advanced for her age. She also isn’t expected to be imitating others until she is 14 months old so she is three months ahead of her age in some ways already! This shows she is already showing good signs of intellectual development.

She is also quite emotionally developed, when she came in the living room there were some of my younger cousin’s teddies on the sofa, I showed her a few of them and she wasn’t very interested, but then I showed her a massive hedgehog teddy and straight away she loved it. She was trying to pick it up, although it was too heavy and she dropped it. She also very loving and caring towards this particular teddy, she was cuddling it and kissing its nose. These show emotional development.

This visit has showed me that she is extremely developed in all of her pies areas and she is very clever, the fact she is months ahead of the average development for an 11 month old is very impressive. In the next visit I will be able to see how much she has developed since the beginning of January.

Plan for visit two.

After my first visit I discovered that she expressed the interest to draw quite a few times, I decided this would be a good idea for visit two as it is something she actually enjoys and it is also something that will really show off her fine motor skills. I have never actually seen her draw but she showed the interest at the last visit and I think I should do drawing for visit two to see how she uses her hands and see how her coordination is, this is physical development I can test for. This will help her social skills as I can help her to draw and she will have to share the crayons with me.

I will need something to draw and colour on and some crayons or pencils. Sapphire does have a water drawing pad thing which I may ask her mum if we can use. The aim of the visit is to see how good she is at using her hand and eye coordination. From this visit I hope to get lots of the information I’m expecting from it such as, her hand grasp, the way she draws, how well her coordination and how sociably developed she is as this will test her ability to share with someone and work with other people.

Visit two

I went to visit Sapphire on Saturday 29th January in the afternoon.

She is 12 months old. The visit took place two days before her first birthday.

I went to Sapphires at around 2pm, when I arrived Sapphire was napping. Instead of waking her as soon as I got there we waited half an hour and then she woke. When she first woke up she was a little bit miserable and she moaned a little bit. But after a while she cheered up a lot and wanted to interact with me. Before we started the activity her mum gave her a biscuit and a bottle of milk, as she was hungry.

I decided to do finger painting with Sapphire as she expressed interest in creative play in my first visit. Before my visit I went to the early learning centre and brought some paints available for 12 months+

When I first set up the paints for her to use, I noticed she didn’t really have a favourite colour to paint with, although she did put her hand straight into the brightest colour paint on the palette, which was yellow. I gave her a paintbrush but she wasn’t really interested and preferred using her fingers and hands. She also tried to put the paint in her mouth at first, but then I corrected her and showed her what to do with the paints, she understood when I said ‘no’ to her when she tried to put the paint in her mouth and then she stopped, this shows good intellectual development as she understood what I meant.

She didn’t really know what to do with the paint; she liked just putting her hands on the paper and rubbing it in, this is good physical development and fine motor skills as it is using her hands. She liked to mix the colours together and seemed to want as many colours on the paper as possible. The colours she used were, yellow, red, pink, blue, green and purple. The used them all except for the purple one, this shows an example of intellectual development as she understood the difference between the bright colours e.g. yellow, green, pink etc, and the darker colours e.g. purple.

I also wanted her to do handprints with the paint, she enjoyed this after I showed her how to do it, when she saw me make a handprint she copied me and wanted to do one of her own, this did get very messy as she wanted to smother paint everywhere, this is an example of hand and eye coordination as she had to watch what she was doing with her hands and make sure she did it right, especially with the fingerprinting.

Finger painting helps with her fine motor skills as this activity involves using her fingers and holding a paintbrush, although she insisted on using her fingers to paint she could hold the paintbrush in her fist.

Finger painting helps with social development as it involves working with another person and sharing equipment such as, the paint, paper and brushes. Also allowing me to show her how to do it properly shows that she is a patient and sociable child.

The physical development she also showed was standing up for a long period of time, considering she is only 12 months old standing up for a long period of time is quite good.