Abstract
This case study was conducted on a young girl named Tracy. Observations on her were made at an early learning center classroom. She is five years of age, the only child in her family and she lives at her grandmothers place with the father. Throughout this paper, Tracys development is compared to that which is considered to be normal by mentalists the work mainly focuses on the physical, cognitive and social development of Tracy.
Moreover, it also gives various examples of how Tracy is developing in a normal way that is in line with her age.Introduction.Observations on Tracy are done in an indoor environment the early center of learning. At home, Tracy lives with her father and her grandmother. She is the only child in her family and therefore has a bedroom of her own. Her parents are divorced but she frequently gets the chance to visit her mother. Tracy if four years of age. She likes the pink color and loves everything associated with Disney princesses. She plays house daily at the learning center.
Moreover, she enjoys playing kitchen together with playing with dolls. At one point, she also told me that when outside she enjoys playing on the swings. On the other hand, she does not like doing boy things such as playing with trucks this was evident since through observing her, I realized that she preferred to play with girls rather than playing with boys. Moreover, she interacts more with bright colors (such as purple and pink) and passionately dislikes dark colors.
She occasionally attends speech therapy sessions inorder to deal with her speech. This makes Tracy a very interesting girl and the right candidate for such a case study.Due to the fact that Tracy is four years of age, she is extremely active. In addition to that, interms of her physical development, she is average in nature. She is fit physically and when given the opportunity to play with others, she totally enjoys the moment. Moreover, due to the fact that observations were being made at the early center of learning, most questions were directed to the teacher rather than her mother. When it comes to weight and height, Tracy is average. According to the weight and growth chart, a four years old girl is expected to have an average height of thirty seven inches. Tracy has a height of thirty nine inches, with a weight of thirty five pounds. Moreover, the pregnancy was totally normal according to my awareness and throughout toddlerhood, Tracys development was normal. As days keep on moving, Tracy grows more. However, she is considered to be average for her age during the years of pre-k.As I already said, Tracy is avery active girl.
When given a chance, she enjoys running around and exploring things. When given a chance to play outside the house, Tracy can throw, kick, catch and bounce a ball adequately. She is however still developing her hand-eye coordination. Moreover, Tracy is able to run, jump up and down together with hopping on both feet. She is trying her best to be accurate when it comes to skipping down but with time when will surely be accurate.Tracy also has the ability to dress and undress without any assistance from an adult. She enjoys the independence and freedom to pick out her clothes and anything else that she wishes to put on. Moreover, in the bathroom, she is self-reliant. When it comes to using scissors a school, she rarely calls for assistance and one of her favorite activities in school is drawing and painting. When doing drawing and painting activities, Tracy likes making a mess since she believes that painting must be done with the use of a hand. She is also concisely able to write her name.She loves colors pink and purple and she therefore feels extremely happy when given a chance to use these colors in crafting. Tracy is excellent at using her gross and fine motor skills when doing art and craft.Tracy loves playing around other when being observed.
Moreover, she is a good friend to many of her classmates who she gets along with extremely well. According to information from Feldman, Tracy is in the constructive play stage she is able to play cooperatively with the other children- taking turns, playing together and playing games. In addition to that, Tracy enjoys being physical being physical is very instrumental to children of Tracys age since they are kept active. Generally, according to development mentalists, Tracy is operating at the right range for a four yearold child. All aspects of her physical growth curve are normal. She is doing everything that needs to be done by a four year old child. She enjoys playing and is very active. Tracy is fit physically and loves playing a lot aside from doing physical activities.Tracy enjoys learning and attending school at the early center of learning, sheis a smart young child.
She enjoys doing numerous activities that are related to learning. Tracy is able to effectively complete tasks if asked to and many times, she likes doing these tasks on her own. According to hear teacher at the early center of learning, Tracy is well behaved and a good girl generally.According to Feldman (2007), cognitively, Tracy is in the pre-operational stage this stage runs from two years to seven years. Therefore, the fact that Tracy is four years of agemeans that she is an excellent placement for the stage. Cognitively, Tracy is in the normal group this is because she is developing normally in line with her age, according to develop-mentalists. By saying Tracy is normal for her age, it means that she is able to write her name but is unable to figure out the correct sequenceof letters, writing in the alphabets to her is not a problem, she is good at listening, she is able to count and she is slowly gaining interest in how to sound specific letters. These are just but afew cognitive abilities that are normal for a four year old child.
As year continue to move and Tracy continues advancing in age, her cognitive abilities will continue to progress too.When being observed in a school setup, Tracy exhibited normal cognitive signs for a child four years of age. A good example is when instructions are being given by the teacher in class, Tracy listens attentively and is able to perform tasks in line with the given instructions. When working independently on a given project, she will rarely ask for assistance, but many times, she will try to complete the project on her own without paying attention to any sort of distractions. She will diligently work on the project, putting too much effort on what shes doing inorder to accomplish a fine result. Many of the other students in her class tend to rush with what they are doing, but for Tracy, she will take her time since she loves perfection. Moreover, Tracy loves making choices and decisions on her own. She loves doing fun activities and learning experiences together with exploring new things.Counting is another thing that is enjoyed greatly by Tracy she has the ability to count up-to fifty, a rather advanced stepfor a four year old child. Moreover, she knows all the months of the year.
Moreover, she has the knowledge of primary colors and it is amazing that she has begun learning them in Spanish. She is in the process of learning sounds and letters of the alphabet. Recently, she learned how to correctly write her name which is a great achievement. One other thing enjoyed by Tracy is being read to she enjoys when someone reads a book to her. Many at timesduring these reading sessions, she will point to various words and as what the words mean. This is evidence that Tracy has interest in reading skills and she admits that she desires to know how to read one day.
Due to the fact that Tracy attends sessions of speech therapy, her language development is becoming better each day. Sometimes, you really have to listen to what she says. Moreover, when she is excited, she talks very fast and therefore she needs to be reminded to talk slowly. When upset, she starts crying and therefore she is being encouraged to express herself using words. Basically, her main speech problems are confusing sounds and annunciation for examples . Therefore, the speech therapy sessions have been of real assistance to hersince despitethe fact that she has been attending the sessions for barely three months, a significant improvement can be noticed in her words. Occasionally, you will find Tracy talking to herself especially when trying to figure out something. This episode is very entertainingto watch. When asked about what she does during the festive season, she was able to tell me about going to her mums place and Disney land.
This is a good illustration ofconcepts, series of activities that normally take place during the festive season. This just demonstrates the numerous cognitive capabilities that Tracy has.Cognitively, Tracy is in the normal group for a four year old. She is in the pre-operational stage according to Piaget. She likes learning and loves going to school.
According to her teacher, Tracy is well behaved and a good student. This therefore means that her cognitive development is normal.Tracy is quickly developing many emotional and social skills and abilities. According to Feldman (2007), Tracys development is accurate and she possesses numerous abilities for a four year old child. According to her teacher at the early center of development, Tracy has been very talkative all the time she openly shares out her opinion and if she wants something, she will keep on asking. Incase the explanation she receives is not clear, she will keep on asking until she gets it right. She enjoyed talking ever since she was a toddler. This made her learn very many words within a short time. As Tracy progressed in her sentence and word usage, her teacher and dad were able to realize that she was having difficulties in the pronunciation of certain words and this was the idea behind attending speech therapy. At the speech therapy centers, any improvement is speech is rewarded weekly and this greatly motivates Tracy to attend the classes. This has made Tracys speech to improve significantly her sound and word pronunciationhas improved. She will continue attending the speech therapy sessions so as to keep on improving.
According to Feldman (2007), during the preschool period, children develop some sort of racial and gender identity. This statement is true since when Tracy was being observed, she played more with other girls than playing with boys. At the early center of learning, the children were taught about various cultures. They are taught to appreciate different cultures and colors hence making them appreciate the fact that these children are just like them. it is very important to children to be taught from a young age about different races and cultures especially if they are learning in an environment that accommodates different cultures.
Another emotional/social development stated out by Feldman (2007) states children begin viewing individuals as peers and start creating friendships and relationships based on shared interests and truth. While observing Tracy, it is noted that she created friendships with peers from her class. Tracy enjoys playing house, and playing with dolls, there are other girls in her who also love playing with dolls and playing house. They therefore get along very well and play together since they share the same interest. She plays with girls and trusts them since they are all interested in the same thing. Tracy knows how toshare and therefore playing cooperatively is not a problemto her.
At times, she just starts crying when frustrated. She is therefore always reminded to use her words to explain herself instead of crying since it is important to socially communicate with her peers inorder to make them know what is bothering her.
It is very essential for preschoolers to cultivate good skills socially. Generally, Tracy has many emotional/social skills that are expected for children her age. She is therefore on the right track when it comes to developing her emotional/social skills (Feldman 2007).Tracy continues to rapidly grow with each new day and this growth is in all aspects of her life including emotional/social stage.It was extremely fantastic visiting the early center of development.
The environment was inviting and friendly and once could easily tell that children were present in the premises due to the noise. The rooms were filled with artwork and pictures that had been done by the children. There was a teacher for every age group. Tracys teacher was called Precious. Precious was exciting, fun-spirited and was always in agood mood. The other teachers in the facility were extremely welcoming and friendly.Through observation, I noticed that Tracy had a fabulous relationship with Precious. Tracy would go to her teacher to seek clarification if she has any problem or needed assistance with any task. At times, Tracy could come to me for help with various tasks incase the teacher was busy.
All the children in class looked up to Precious and I observed that they enjoyed having her as their teacher.Visits to the early center of learning were made twice a week from nine oclock in the morning to midday. This means that I basically observed Tracy doing more of the same routine for the entire time.
I did not have enough time to observe Tracy playing outside with her friends especially in the afternoon inorder to find out what tasks they performed during this time.
Moreover, I did not get the opportunity to interact with Precious more for matters beside discussing Tracy. It would be quite interesting to find out more information on how she conducted her teaching. However, while observing Tracy, I was also able to observe her teaching methods and skills but I believe it could be easier if I had more face to face conversations with Precious. For Tracy, many of the time I observed her in the classroom environment, playing and learning with her peers.
Sometimes, I got the opportunity to have one on one conversation with her and even conduct some activities just the two of us many of these activities were physical activities such as hop, skip and run. It was also amusing and interesting to watch her too.
Tracy enjoyed the one on one interactions and she did quite well in performing these tasks.Feldman (2007) offers a lot of beneficial information and using Tracy as a reference point, I was able to learn a lot considering the fact that she was adequately progressing for her age. Cognitively, it is quite important for children who are four years of age to start knowing how to write and this was observable in Tracy since she was able to write her name. She knows all .