Standard 1: promoting child development and learning.

Key elements:
1a: knowing and understanding young children's characteristics and needs, from birth through
age 8.
Course: Experiences with the young child (2) (ECED3070).
Assignment: Child Report 2.
Understanding children's characteristics and needs is one of the significant standards
that an early childhood teacher should be knowledgeable of as it is the base to deal with
children and help them learn. This assignment helped me to observe and identify the child
characteristics in different domains such as: cognitive, social, emotional, and physical. It also
helped me to concentrate on the child progress in these domains through the semester.
In this report, we were asked to choose a child from the child care center and observe
him\her. I chose one child and I observe her for one week; I took notes and I wrote first report
about the child. Then, I continued observing her through the semester and I wrote a second
report describing child development.
When I first studied about child development in the different domains, I thought about
how I am going to remember all characteristics. However, when I wrote this assignment it
was like the applicable side of what I studied. It was nice to see what skills the child has at
the beginning of the semester and then identifying the new skills that the child has acquired.
Furthermore, I started comparing the child skills with other children while observing them in
the classroom, the outdoor area and the gym. Some individual differences were noticed in
children's skills which is normal. For instance, in the physical domain, I observed children
running, walking and jumping but some children can walk on their toes while some don't
have this skill yet. Moreover, I observed varied personalities of children; those who are easy-
going, smiling, talking and those who are shy and quiet. Indeed, observing children made me
realize that children develop differently and they have different characteristics even though,
they are in the same developmental stage; thus, it is important to consider these differences in
planning activities for children.