According to my research and comparing it with the norm for a child bens age I can safely say the Ben is at the normal stage of development in physical development.
Intellectual Development
Out of all aspects of bens development I have observed I am most impressed with his intellectual development, especially his use of language.
From the first day I met Ben I noticed his speech was very poor he was not fluent at all he was speaking telegraphic speech which is way below the average for a child his age, his vocabulary was also very short. But this has improved dramatically he is now speaking fluent and grammatical speech which is a great improvement from before this is the norm for a child aged five says “Hutchinson and Oliver” bens vocabulary has also improved severely he has widened his vocabulary and is speaking more mature.
Bens drawing and written skills has certainly improved a lot he can now draw good pictures before he could only draw a boy with legs and arms and now he can add fingers and toes (see below). In visit 1 he was at the later part of stage 6 but is now at the later part of stage 8 he is able to draw people with bodies, facial features, hair, arms clothes, legs, hands, feet and fingers. Bens written skills have improved but still a lot of room for developing he is still scribbling out the lines, in visit 3 he could not write his name in full at all on a straight line and need help with the letter “g”, in visit 5 he was able to write his name on a straight line and do the “g” with no help I believe this improvement has come because she has worked on thus skill at school and him parents have helped him at home.
Bens impressed me a lot when it came to understanding of concepts of numbers, letters and colours; he showed a great understanding this is the average for a child aged 4-5 according to Ruth L Barnett. He proved to me he knew a lot of colours and understood that some colours are dark and some are light in visit 2 when we used plasticine. Ben has proved to me that his counting skills have improved tremendously from visit 1 through to visit 6.
Ben’s concentration spam is not at the stage I would have liked, he is very energetic and finds it very hard to sit still in one place for a certain time, in many of my activities I have noticed that his concentration span is very short; he can not sit still at all. In conclusion Ben is quite an intelligent child he is at the right stage of development and has plenty of room for improvement; Ben has impressed me very much in this category.
Emotional Development
Ben has shown me lots of different emotions during the six visits. He has shown me excitement when he talks about his past experiences. Ben unfortunately has shown me more negative emotions then positive this is not very good. Bens main negative emotions was jealousy, Ben gets very jealous if I were to praise another child on doing good work, Ben would start a tantrum and in some worse cases he would hit the other child, Ben has an anger problem and has to learn to control it, being jealous is a problem but it is only normal but I seriously recommend Ben doing something about it, Ben is not a sad person he is very happy and easily enjoys himself. Ben did not only show me negative emotions there were also many positive, I have seen Ben laugh, be happy, smile, have fun, enjoy himself, being caring and being excited.
Ben acts and try’s to be very brave, in visit 3 we were talking about his room he told me that he sleeps in his room in the complete dark I thought he might be scared but he told me he is not scared of the dark at all and he like it this was unusual, this is not the norm quotes “Bruce and Meggit” they describe 3-5 year olds being “easily afraid for example in the dark”.
Ben is a very energetic person, he was very happy trough all of my visits; he is a happy child who enjoys himself, as should for a child his age. Ben showed me a few examples of temper during my visits and appeared to get a bit moody if he did not get his own way.
In conclusion I am yet again very happy with bens emotional development it has improved dramatically but can still do some improvements with the negative emotions especially jealousy.
Social Development
I think that bens attitudes overall were quite good but very inconsistent, one week Ben can be very sociable and try and make friends and pe nice to them but other weeks he can be rude, selfish, egocentric and act very individual.
Ben doesn’t understand “taking turns” this is below average for a child of his age. Ben however “chooses his own friends” this is the norm for a child of his age according to “Hodder and Stouten”. He has a good relationship with his brother Alex and can play and share with him but always have the odd argument and fight. Ben is very close to his parents and siblings and I think that he has gained from belonging to a large family.
Ben and I have a very strong relationship, I knew a bit about Ben before my study’s by asking the teachers about him but now after my study’s I feel a strong connection and an attachment has been built, I now know Ben very well and he seems to enjoys playing and being with me. We have certainly become very close. I feel Ben has enjoyed each activity very much and enjoyed spending the time with me, I think he liked it very much me spending my time with him and I think this made him feel very special. Now my visits are over I will still visit Ben in the nursery and will continue to play and spend time with him.
Final Evaluation FARS
My focus area of research was concerned with physical play and I planned six activities which would help me observe Ben’s physical development to see if the research I had done into physical play linked with what I was observing. I soon found out that it is very difficult to observe only one type of play since most play involves almost all types of development.
The first activity took place during visit 1 when I took a survey to the streets of Kingsbury and asked 100 random people what there favorite toy for a 3-5 year old would be, I did this activity to see what the most common toy that children aged 3-5 most enjoy playing with. I predicted that boys will prefer playing with super heroes and girls would prefer to play with dolls. This prediction was proven correct over 50% of the girl’s toys chosen were either dolls or kitchen games. And with the boys over 50% of toys chosen by boys were action figures or ball games.
The next activity occurred on visit 3, this activity was a development survey to all the children in the nursery’s parent’s, and I did this survey to get a good idea on the stages of development the children were at. This activity turned out to be very useful, I predicted that the majority of the class will be at the normal stage of development for there age, my prediction were again proven correct the majority of the class are at the right stage of development and are learning and playing at the norm for there age.
In visit 4 I wrote a questionnaire to my child’s parents to find out where he goes to play in his private time, this was possible the most useful activity of them all I found out where he likes to play, what’s his favorite place and how often he goes there, my predictions was that he would be very lucky and get taken to a lot of different places and visit them regularly, yet again my prediction was proven correct.
In visit 5 I did an activity which involved an interview with bens mother, the interview consists of questions about bens social skills, I felt this would be very important as social skills has a lot to do with play and I wanted to have a better idea on how interested Ben is making friends and how he plays with them.
My FARS activity took over almost all my 6 visits, in conclusion I am very happy with the out come, I now know a lot about physical play and how children play, my background research helped me tremendously is gave me ideas on games to play. I did research to find out what games are favorites for children and what ways children like to play.
