Emotional development: Lauren showed me that she has had a good day and that she enjoys the park a lot, you could tell by the way she kept smiling and looking at everyone etc. She also enjoyed it because she was talking about it on the way home.
Intellectual development: I managed to study Lauren’s development, especially her gross motor skills which I was looking upon in particular because I was seeing how thy have changed over the past four months. I noticed that Lauren’s self confidence has grew a lot in the past four months and that she has changed how she acts with the equipment in the park, her confidence has probably comes from her swimming lessons and with her being confident in the water, it has probably boosted her confidence in a whole. Lauren used her gross motor skills a lot, and I could see quite a difference in the way she uses the equipment than last time, in the way she climbed the fake wall was different to last time but she remembered where she had to place her feet and arms, and she got up herself. On the swings she can use her legs a lot more and she gets higher quicker because of the strength in her legs.
Conclusion
Once again I think my visit went well. I thought she would have changed her skills but not as much as she did. She was also more talkative than last time and seemed a lot keener on the apparatus. She is an intelligent child and has a good range of imagination. She has a lot more ability that what she show and her confidence is growing each time. Lauren co-operates well with many people and she is a friendly child.
I was able to study the aspects of Lauren’s development, which I wanted too, I mostly observed the gross motor skills to her which she seemed too managed very well and in which she fitted my expectations.
FAR assignment
I dad a survey on the park and how it’s safety compared to the original safety of rospa.com, I also looked at the park apparatus and what age is best suited and how it helps to develop child’s skills.
I found a picture on the apparatus in the park and it tells you the age that the apparatus is suitable for. There is also a sign that says for ages 7 upwards, which is for different apparatus for old children.
This survey (below) is a survey of which I found on the website of a playground safety and its good points and bad points. The link is: . I used it because it is an actual like to rate your playground.
Scoring: For every YES, your playground receives one point. Add up the number of points for each section.
20-23 = A: Congratulations on having SAFE playground. Make sure you maintain this level of excellence.
16-19 = B: Your playground is on its way to providing a SAFE environment for children. Work on the areas checked NO.
12-15 = C: Your playground has potential for being hazardous for children. Take corrective measures.
8-11 = D: Children are at risk on this playground. Start today and make improvements
7 and below: Do not allow children on this playground
This is a useful survey as it gives you a good mark scheme at the end and tells you how suitable the park is for children and how and what needs improving if anything.
When I used this survey to do my research it scored 20 out of possible 24, which is pretty food, as you can see from the mark scheme it got an A. If I did this park a year or two years ago it would off been really low and probably not safe to play on, because it use to have massive concrete stumps on it and the surfaces use to be concrete before they did it all up last year.
Final evaluation
Physical development: Since I began my visit in September Lauren has grew 2cms, but according to the child development book by P.Minett she is still the right height for her age. Lauren’s fine manipulative skills and hand – eye co-ordination has improved over the period of my study. In Lauren’s visits she has increased her hand and eye-co-ordination and her language skills, she has a very large vocabulary and she knows a wide range of spellings. She knows most of the basic stuff like the alphabet letters A-Z, numbers 1-50, counts in 10s to a 100, also counts in 20s to a 100. She can also write and spell her own name correctly.
Lauren’s gross motor skills are very good when at the park and making cookies. In visit 2 and 6 when I took Lauren to the park, I observed that Lauren has a good sense balance developing and she was able to walk, skip, jump, which is average for her to do this, according to the child development book.
She can walk and run upstairs in an adult fashion. She can ride a tricycle confidently and she uses the pedals on it. She can catch and throw and kick a ball, which the level of ball skills she should be up to for her age. Overall I would say Lauren’s physical development was a lot better than I expected it to be because she would rather play inside and do creative things, so I didn’t think she would be too confident in the park and swimming etc. but she proved me wrong, as she is confident. She uses her gross motor skills how she is supposing too.
Her fine motor skills were good as well and she gets these from playing indoors so I expected these to be good anyway. She can control a pencil with a mature pincer grasp. She can also fasten and unfasten zips and buttons and tie her own shoelaces. She showed me that when we was getting ready to go the park and coming home from the park etc.
Intellectual development: Lauren is a chatty girl but can be shy at times, but when we was on our visits she was very chatty and she kept telling me lots of stories. She asked a lot of questions and told me about what she does in school. She is good at reading some words but other words she makes up and just guesses what it says sometimes its right and other times it is wrong, but it shows she is confident about trying and attempting o try new things.
She has a very extensive vocabulary. She can say her sentences but sometimes gets mixed up when saying some words. Her speech is more or less grammatically correct and she enjoys telling long stories but sometimes gets confused.
Lauren has a good knowledge and she remembers things very well, her understanding is also good as she listens carefully t instructions she has been told and she follows the rules because she knows there could be consequences. Lauren’s intellectual skills are brilliant because she uses all her sense and she explores things in great detail and she likes to learn new things.
Social and emotional development: Lauren likes to play with other children and knows how to share and take it in turns. She likes to play with her brother Cameron a lot and her cousins. She likes to play games like dressing up and dolls and house. She uses her imagination in a lot of the things she does. She co-operates well with people but can be little bit aggressive at times when she doesn’t always get her own way. She is a pleasant child and likes to talk to everyone and like to play with all different people. She also lets anyone join in the game even if they have started playing. She can be a little bit of a bossy boots at times, but someone always takes over the bossiness at times. She plays with other children that are her age so she tells them about school because her and Cameron go a different school to their cousins. So they tell one another little stories about what has gone in school.
Lauren has a positive self-esteem her confident is growing all the time, she can be shy in front of strangers and if she does something silly she well go shy but other than that she is confident in herself and her ability of what she can do.
She looks after herself a lot, she likes to keep brushing her hair and she loves cleaning her teeth, she thinks you have to clean them before you have something to eat and after you have something to eat. She cleans her about 10 times a day.
Her confidence is growing all the time because she is encouraged to do new skills, praised for what she can do and not criticised for what she can’t do, she is given choices about what clothes she should wear and which toys she is allowed out to play with.
Lauren is a child who isn’t spoilt but likes to play with lots of new toys and she knows she can get her own a lot of the time. She doesn’t always get what she wants though, she is a child that loves everyone and likes giving cuddles and kisses to everyone. She is a mummy’s girl rather than a daddy’s because she likes to dress like her mum and act like her mum etc. she is beginning to grow out of her shyness but I think she well always have shyness in side her when meeting new people.
Overall I think Lauren’ is a child that has confidence and is clever and outgoing child and has lots of ability and confidence in herself even though she can be shy at times. She has good basic skills and her language skills are brilliant as well. My FAR proved to be correct that Lauren would benefit form her physical skills and she prefers to do indoor activities but she is good at outdoor activities.
Lauren is a pleasant child that enjoys playing with people and being with people. Lauren and Cameron are treated the same really, but because Cameron is with his mum most of the time whilst his dad is at work the her does things like going shopping with mum on a weekend etc. Which he thinks is for girls, when his dad comes home he just wants to play football or watch football on the television or do something sporty and boyish than play with dolls or do fine manipulative things such as drawing, colouring, playing with Lego etc.
Lauren’s imagination is good, and a lot better than Cameron this is probably due to the fact Lauren will sit down and watch television for hours and hours but Cameron won’t watch television for so long he always wants to be active and doing something different every 15 minutes.
With Cameron being a boy and Lauren being a girl I feel other is a difference in the way they are treated sometimes, and how they react to it, as they both think pink is for girls and blue is for boys, which more children think when they are that age bit I also think that Alison and Chris have been involved for the children to believe that’s a true facts because when they see other children like new born babies for example: if it’s a girl it has something pink, and if it’s a boy it has something blue on. This is sexual stereotyping with boys having blue and girls having pink.
During our visit to the local park I discovered several things about Lauren; whilst she was playing I notice how she gained more confidence in her own ability to try different things such as the climbing frame. The prediction I made about her physical skills was wrong and she proved much more able than I expected her to be. She showed a wide range of gross motor skills, which is rather unusual for her as she normally, prefers to play indoors using her fine manipulative and intellectual skills. As you can see from the interview with her parents in visit 2.
When Cameron and Lauren finished there pictures of on another they showed them to one another and agreed they looked like each other. So their mum and dad could see them when they got home, they put them on the kitchen table and wrote a note, guess whose whom? But I told them how to spell whose but they know how spell to spell guess and who without help. There stage of drawing was at a stage nine according to the childcare and development third edition book by Pamela Minett.
Evaluation of the visit
As I said in my predictions I though that Lauren would have the more creative side to her, but I wasn’t that right as they both seem to have the same colouring techniques but different drawing. Lauren said that she enjoyed drawing one better than the masks, but she found that , activity is easier this shows that she likes to work herself hard and that she would rather do hard things then easy things. She sort off sets herself a target that she can do it even though it is going to be hard.
She likes to do creative activities a lot and she has got lots of colouring books and pens, pencil, crayons and sticky are stuff and all that stuff. She is always drawing pictures for her family; she even drew her own Christmas card for her mum and dads, and then a separate one for Cameron. I would say that Lauren is a more creative girl then a more physical activity girl.
I would say that Cameron has the ability to draw just like Lauren likes to do, but he is more bothered about playing football, playing with his toys, and acting like Spiderman. Lauren likes to have her work showed off when she does something she like it to get hung up on the wall in their activity lounge, and she likes the attention off doing something like that, where as Cameron if he draws a picture usually he throws it in the bin afterwards instead of giving it to his mum or dad to put up on the wall. Lauren seems to be more creative and Cameron is more physical this is probably because Cameron likes to get dirty etc, and play outside where as Lauren doesn’t really like to be outside doing dirty activities. Cameron is just as clever as Lauren is but doesn’t show it like Lauren does, he is lazy with things he does and say sometimes. Cameron could probably be even better than Lauren at drawing but won’t sit down and draw like Lauren does.
Cameron is going to have swimming lessons as well as Lauren, because it will boost there confidence when in the water and it will be n advantage to them when they are older and go aboard and want to go into Water Park, etc. But because Cameron goes to football practice at the same time of the swimming lessons, Cameron has to go in the earlier group because off the time difference also because Cameron isn’t that strong swimmer and isn’t too confident about the water and going in the pool, etc.
Development: I observed her emotional development and positive emotions she gave when playing with the Lego. I noticed her language skills where rather good and her number skills were excellent. She is becoming increasingly skilful with her fine motor skills sine she enjoys playing with small object and construction toys. Her intellectual skills are brilliant because her imagination and her creativity are amazing. As she always seems to have something on her mind and knows what to do with the objects when they are given to her.
Lauren played with the Lego for about half an hour, which is pretty good for a child to stick to playing with a toy for so long, but she must have enjoyed it to play with it. She was concentration hard when playing with Barbie’ but lacked concentration when playing with Lego, she was just messing bout at times and been silly, trying to get attention. She uses her imagination a lot in whatever type of play she is doing whether its creative, physical, fine manipulative etc, she always has a sense of imagination. Cameron has a sense of imagination but his imagination seems to be the same all the time because he just thinks he is Spiderman and when he goes Florida Spiderman is going to pick him to be his helper and then he can’t come home again. He told his um all this and he tries to copy things the Spiderman does e.g. climbing up walls etc.
Lauren gets her imagination of things she has seen such as television programmes, magazines, colouring books, films, etc.
Bibliography
To find out my research I used the following resources:
Books: Childcare and development by Pamela Minett
Websites:
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: Early learning centre
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: Baby world
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: Bcc
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: Rospa
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: Mother care
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: Toys r us
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: Tomy toys
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: Lego
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: toys and play
I used Encarta 2000 as a software product
Letters:
- Toy ‘r’ us
- Early learning centre
- Pann
- Lego
- Mother care
- National action plan
- Mother and babies
