Angelica Kohlmann CHD145, E20M

This Ones for You: Movement Activities

Age range of children: 4-5 Sex: Female and male Period of time observed: 1-5 pm Length of observation: Four hours Center (activity area) of room observed: Arts area and Outside play
1. What dramatic play themes were suggested in these observations by the amount and kind

of props available to the children? Does the supply in each situation you observed seem adequate? In the art area, there were three stations set up painting on an art easel, a bookmark creative activity using stickers, markers and pre-cut paper, and a spin-art leaves/spider-webs station. There were plenty of materials available, and two instructors overseeing the classroom. One teacher was providing one-on-one help and guidance with the spin-art machine. Outside on the playground there were two jungle gyms, two swing sets, some tricycles and a play-scape for the children to play on.
2. What roles did you observe children playing in these dramatic activities?

How do you think these roles are related to children's real life experiences? Explain. In the art center, the children werent playing dramatically, but they were all very excited about the Halloween/Fall theme in the projects, showing their creepy spiders to their friends. During outside play I noticed a few different cliques of children, one of which was playing house. There were two girls and three boys, a mom, daughter, dad, brother, and the last boy decided he wanted to be the puppy. They spent about 15 minutes running around taking their puppy to the mall, to the beach, and even out to dinner. I could see that the girl who was playing the mom was a younger sister at home. She enjoyed being the mommy and having a little more control over the other kids who were the same age as her, and I have personally seen her two older siblings pushing her around when they came to pick her up. The boy who played the puppy didnt seem to interested in being a part of a family of humans, he wouldve rather them been a wolf pack, but the others werent interested in that. I asked if the boy had any pets at home, and he told me no, but they were going to adopt a puppy in the next month when they moved into a new house. I assume this is why he was so excited to be the family pup py. Consult the teachers in the two rooms in which you observed to learn how information obtained through observing children's dramatic play is used in guiding children or in making future plans. Give examples in your reply. My co-teacher in child care told me that when she sees children take an interest in a subject, or a color, anything really, she will try to incorporate that into the activities more often. If she wants to expose the children to new concepts or ideas she will slowly introduce different items into each center. For example, the past week we introduced Halloween and harvest crop items into our room. We added spider webs from the party store into our sensory table, as well as indian corn, acorns, and plastic spiders.
3. In each of the centers/rooms in which you observed, what limits were placed on children

during dramatic play? How do you think these limits would change in an outdoor dramatic activity?

Our limits on play are very minimal. We do not allow running or yelling indoors and of course no playfighting. Beyond that, the children are just asked to be gentle with our materials. Outside our limits drop further to no play-fighting. We encourage children to run around and have fun outside. Outside we

Angelica Kohlmann CHD145, E20M encourage the children to use their imaginations more, as we dont have the costumes or dolls outside for dramatic play. But we do have stationary playscapes and car jungle gyms.

Choose one or several of the above activities to use with children. Describe your experience. What was the most successful activity? The least? Why? How would you adjust these activities for older children? Do you feel that older children still need gross motor activities? Why? The activities I do with my preschoolers combine a lot of the listed gross-motor activities. To get everyone to focus and prepare to line up for outside play or walking in the hall, we do a call & response game. I will call out for the children to freeze where they are, then once theyve stopped moving I call a random act (Take three steps forward Hop once Run for 3 seconds etc.). This way we cover a lot of gross motor activities like running, walking, tip-toeing, and galloping among others. The children have a lot of fun, and it helps to get some of their energy out before walking into the halls.