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Journal 1 Ages: Birth- Five Years

Juliann MacNicoll
Pacific Oaks College
Early Childhood Themes and Life Cycle Issues
Dan Beaman
3/16/17
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For our first journal assignment, I observed children from ages one-three years old in my

friends parents childcare center they run in their own home which is located in Culver City.

Culver City is primarily a small town with approximately five public elementary schools, one

middle school, and one high school. Since the district is so small and the neighborhoods tend to

be friendly, this is a main destination for families that are located all over Los Angeles County to

who try to have their children attend Culver City schools. Because of all the driven families, this

prime location is incredibly diverse. The ages of the children run from six months to three years

old. I visited last Thursday morning around 9am which is usually when the kids start getting

dropped off by their parents. During this observation, Ive notice the several different levels of

developmental stages including, emotions, verbal, and thought process.

As I entered the home, I first noticed an older child siting on one of the couches

watching a developmental program on the television. He is three years old and is very strong

with his vocabulary and communication. The television program was discussing the importance

of sharing and had two children building blocks. My friend who was sitting across from me next

to him sarcastically says, See how they are sharing? You should do that too. He looks at her

for a second and turns back around and continues watching the television. The show then

discusses different shapes and displayed a car driving down a dirt road passing a tree. The main

character asks if something doesnt belong and he pointed out that the car shouldnt be in the

apple tree and giggled. After a few minutes the owner of the childcare walks towards the front

room and talks to us about some of the kids. While still watching the program he begins to say,

I want to eat my green apples. The childcare provider says he can eat them at lunch. Within a

couple minutes, three of the other kids were all sitting on the same couch with him and began to

do their own thing, pushing each other and climbing on top of each other. The childcare provider
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told them to stop, he began to aggressively shout, I want my green apples now! The childcare

provider proceeded to tell him not to shout and he can have his apples at lunch. I noticed

throughout the observation he was the most communitive and the most verbal with expressing

his emotions.

The next child that had most of my attention was two years old. She had a glow on her

face from the minute I walked into the home. She was extremely curious of the new face she has

not seen before and followed me around keeping an eye on me. I would sharply turn my head

and give her a glare and all she would do is smile and giggle. I eventually told her how pretty she

was and all she did was wrap her arms around herself and ran into the other room. While she ran

into the kitchen, another girl who was the same age was also sitting on the couch watching the

same television program. She points out with a look of distress on her face and shouts, Look the

baby is crying! and points to the television. Another child that is one gets dropped off by her

mom. She is very hesitant about being left and continues to grip onto her mom while shes

kissing her goodbye and saying she loves her. After the mom left, she soon began to get

comfortable and grabbed a toy baby doll. She drops the doll on the floor and leans over to pick it

up and loses her balance and falls on top of the toy. While shes still on the floor another girl

trips over on top of her, and the other girl watches and then purposely falls on top of both of

them and just laid squishing all three of them. The little one begins to cry and the daughter of the

childcare provider tells them to get up and helps them pull up from each other. The one that fell

accidently on top of the younger one stood in front of her looking at her face understanding that

something is wrong and turns around to the daughter of the childcare provider for

acknowledgement that she is supposed to hug her and gives her a hug. The child that purposely

fell on top of them copied them and joined in with the hugging. For a good minute, the three of
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them were strongly hugging the one year old and by the look of her face you can tell she was

over the hug and was getting uncomfortable so the daughter told them thats enough and to let

her go.

After a few minutes of hanging around in the living room, the owner moves them over to

the main play room. Another child arrives later on and I sat in the corner of the room and

watched how they all interacted with each other. Most of them were doing their own thing,

playing with their own toys. One of the girls was mimicking buckling in a toy doll into a stroller,

while the other kids were playing with their own sets of blocks. The two year old girl thats

caught my attention the whole time I was observing ran up to the daughter of the childcare

provider and had to different sets of block pieces she stacked on her own and made them into

two different shapes. She hands them to her and tries to make them stack on to each other like

lego pieces not realizing that they are different types of blocks so they cant fit into each other.

This experience of watching her trying to figure out why the block pieces did not go hand in

hand reminded me of Jean Piagets theory of conservation. Conservation is the understanding

that something stays the same in quantity even though its appearance changes. Conservation is

the ability to understand that redistributing material does not affect its mass, number, volume, or

length (McLeod, 2010). During this study, Piaget had different shaped glasses filled with the

same amount of liquid. One glass was short and wide while the other glass was skinny and taller.

Children were asked which glass has more water in it even though they watched the same water

being poured from one glass into the other and most of them answered the taller glass because it

gave the illusion that it had more water than the shorter glass. The concrete operational stage is

the third in Jean Piagets theory of cognitive development. This stage usually lasts around from

ages seven to eleven years old. This stage is characterized by the development of organized
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rationale thinking. When the child is mature enough, they will use logical thought or operations

but can only apply logic to physical objects (McLeod, 2010). Children develop the abilities of

conservation such as number area, volume, orientation, and reversibility. After a few minutes of

trying to have her try to help getting the blocks to stick to each other, she walks away and goes to

me to see if I can make the blocks fit. After trying to explaining to her that it wont work because

they are different shapes, I realized that concept was too complicated for her to understand. Then

she eventually moved on to the next adult determined that she will get her blocks to fit. The older

boy had a section filled with stacked blocks and she went over to his stack and tried taking some

of his. He told her no and she got upset and started to kick his blocks down. He obviously had a

melt down and started to shout, She never says sorry! She never apologizes, Im mad. She just

stood there and cried in front of him because she could not have any of his blocks.

After observing this age group, I realized that even though the kids are two-three years

apart, I can strongly see the developmental differences in their age. Emotion was the strongest

developmental stage that was displayed. I wish more kids were there that day and maybe the

experience would have been different.

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References

Cisneros, S. (1984). The house on mango street. New York: Vintage Books.

Erikson, J. (1991). Wisdom and the senses: The way of creativity. New York: Norton.

Gonzalez-Mena, J. (2007). Diversity in early care and education: Honoring differences. Washington,

D.C.: McGraw-Hill Companies.

McLeod, S. (2010). Concrete operational stage. Retrieved on March 14, 2017 from

https://www.simplypsychology.org/concrete-operational.html