Michelle Ong December 2, 2009 CHD 120 Observation 1 Play

Background: Three, three year old male students in the block area. They were going back and forth using the blocks, cars, and people.

During my observation, the students were exhibiting both parallel and associative play which is very well within their developmental range according to the VDSS Milestones of Childhood Development. During one instance of parallel play they were engaged in very limited verbal The communication they did exchange During associative play,

exchange and each playing with different items.

described their own actions or they asked what the other was doing.

two of the students began building their own roads. The ends met and they crashed their cars trying to get around each other. In fact, they didnt want the other on their structures. They

had a discussion on conflict resolution and problem solving (with the guidance of the teacher). Later, a student suggested to the other two that they build a garage because it was raining. While this would have been cooperative play it never transpired because the garage was never built and the students went to back to parallel play by driving their cars and using the blocks in various ways on their own. They built various structures and moved the people around the blocks without collaborating with each other. Associative play was observed a few minutes later when all three used the blocks to build their own towers of varying heights and elements. They kept their conversation to themselves with some verbal exchange to talk about what they made and how their cars would go faster or that they could fly to the top to land.

Cognitively the children were demonstrating constructive play. That is, they were manipulating objects to construct buildings and roads. They used the cars on the roads (blocks and bricks) and flew them up to the towers for landing areas. Using objects such as blocks to create something such as roads, towers, etc. is part of constructive play.