Sandra Harper ECE 1414 31 March 2014 Jemal Larkins
Abigail L. Vautaw, known more commonly by her nickname, Abby, is an adorable 2 and a half year old girl. She was born on the 10 th of October in 2011. She has silky blonde hair and big blue eyes. She is exactly 35 inches tall and weighs 29 pounds. Abby has an amazingly sweet demeanor, she also tends to be a little shy at times and can gets very giggly when she is having a good time. I chose Abby as my case study student because I have become very close with her and her family over the time she has spent in our center. She has an infectious little laugh and smile that melts your heart. I also chose Abby because we both started at the center around the same time. Shortly after I got a job there she joined one of the classrooms. I thought it would be interesting to see where she has gone in her development from the time she started, up until where she is now. Abby was an only child for the first two years of her life until about six months ago when she became a big sister. Her brother Henry was almost born 6 months ago and almost came exactly on her second birthday. Abby absolutely loves having a little brother and is very helpful with Henry at home. She also lives with her mother and father, Bonnie and Michael, who love their daughter dearly. They describe Abby as Gods gift to us and that shes perfect!, they wouldnt change a single thing about her. Dad also added that Abby can be quite stubborn, just like her mother! Michael Vautaw works as an Account Manager and Bonnie Vautaw is a Risk Analyst. Their family is Caucasian and they are of an upper-middle class status. The most recent change in their family has been the birth of their son Henry, which has brought even more joy to their lives. Although there have been those positive changes with the new baby, there have not been any negatives changes, tragedies or concerning problems to occur. Their current parenting style is much of a relaxed approach, although they strongly believe in an attached approach while raising their children as infants. Bonnie believes that it is important to spend at least the first six months to a year with your child at home to focus on establishing strong family bonds. While pregnant with Abby, Bonnie suffered from gestational diabetes. With that, her pregnancy was considered to be high risk which was scary for the parents-to-be. They were relieved when the pregnancy went all the way to full term. Mom had a smooth delivery and there were no complications. Bonnie and Mike were ecstatic to meet their eight pound, ten ounce, 20 in long beautiful baby girl. Abby is now still as healthy as can be. She has been lucky to not have any health problems or illnesses, her family feels that they have been very blessed. As part of her parents attached method of parenting, Abby was kept home as an infant until she was just over a year old. She was taken care of by her loving mother and grandmother (Bonnies mother) until she came to North Hills Childcare Center in late October 2013. To date, North Hills has been the only child care center that Abby has attended. She started in our Turtle room (1- 1 year old). Over the summer of 2013 she moved with the same group of children, to our Duckling room (1 -2 years old) and moved once more in the fall of the current school year. She is now still in our Monkey room with the rest of her 2- 2 year old classmates. Every room has been on a one: four ratio and she has maintained the same classmates (and even some of the same teachers) throughout her stay at our center. While attending North Hills, Abby has experienced many new things from petting zoos and puppet shows to touring a fire truck and meeting a dentist. Our philosophy at North Hills is to expose children to all types of new and interesting ideas and opportunities. Abby is always ready to learn and shows an eagerness and bravery in trying new things. It helps that her parents are very involved in her learning experience, they have come to all over our parent-teacher nights and class picnics and activities.
PHYSICAL Abby enjoys all areas of fine and gross motor play and excels greatly in them. Abby can move in nonlocomotor ways, she loves to dance by bopping and swaying her body to the beat of the music. She can also move in locomotor ways and loves to dance and march up and down the classroom doing spins and turns. While dancing, Abby can successfully label the direction of her movements (up, down, stop, etc) which she demonstrates while listening to songs such as The Freeze, where she yells out freeze! and stops until the music comes back. Abby also does well with following along with the movements being suggested such as The Hokey Pokey or Jump Up and Down (see Observation note # 5). Abby also enjoys time spend outside on the playground where she can climb up and slide down the slide (see Picture #5). She also shows her physical abilities while playing in our gross motor room with all the climbing and gymnastics equipment (see Picture #6) SOCIAL EMOTIONAL Abbys level of social emotional development is very strong. This is an area that she does very well in, especially since becoming a big sister. She does very well with taking care of her own needs and has very positive self-help skills. If there is ever something she needs done and is not able to accomplish her goal without the help of an adult, she is sure to communicate with her teachers about needing help to do things herself (see Observation note # 1). Another area that Abby has made great developmental progress in would be her ability to solve social conflict. As many children her age are unsure of how to communicate with other children the feelings they have when they are angry or frustrated, Abby uses her problem solving skills to express her needs. She knows that using her words is key in solving her problems and makes sure to speak to her friends politely and without using violence (see Observation notes # 4). COGNATIVE While learning about nursery rhymes, there was an art activity for Ba Ba Black Sheep where the children were given numbered bags and several wool type materials (cotton, packing peanuts, popcorn, etc). Abby was able to not only recognize her numbers, but also count out the correct amount of wool pieces for each numbered bag 1-3 (see Artwork Example #1). Abby is also frequently heard demonstrating her ability to count objects as she counts out loud for each step she is walking up or down (see Observation Notes #3). On many occasions Abby can be found building large block towers with Legos, waffle blocks, and other materials. This shows her ability to fit things together and take them apart. One day Abby was playing at the art table and used a color wheel sheet to sort out the different colored scrap materials by color (see Artwork Example #2), she also does well with matching, as she enjoys pairing up the different patterned socks from the bin in the house area (see Observation notes #8). It is very apparent that Abby knows her daily schedule and does well with knowing what comes next in the daily routine. She follows the consistent flow of the day and help remind others of what is coming up next. She is always prepared and ready to start the next activity with positive self-confidence (see Observation Notes #6). LANGUAGE Abby can be quite shy at times, but one thing she loves to do is sing. She can be heard participating in group activities at Chapel, and especially during circle time. Most days at circle time she is one of the few students giving suggestions for songs to sing. She knows almost all the words to many songs and displays her language development with her ability to get up and sing along out loud (see Picture #1). Along with singing at circle time Abby also loves to sit and listen to stories, she often describes the pictures she sees in books and pretends to read books herself. She is capable if reading and verbally labeling many symbols such as letters (A is for Abby) and all her shapes. The other day, during her evaluation, she was shown many shapes (triangle, square, circle, rectangle, oval, diamond, heart, star, octagon, and pentagon) and was able to name every single one (see Young Toddler Shape Evaluation Sheet). APPROACH TO LEARNING At North Hills Child Care Center, the classes do much of the daily planning in the morning as the day is starting. Although this is a practice seen every day in the preschool classrooms, Abbys class does not follow a planning routine. This may be due to the fact that she is in a toddler room (2-2 1/2 ) and the age range tends to have a hard time in planning for the long term. Instead, the children are frequently asked about what decisions they would like to make throughout the day. This helps get them started with the idea of planning out their activities without overwhelming them with too many expectations. Asking more often helps them to remember their goals and keep on the tasks of their choosing. Abby displays a great deal of self-assurance when making decisions about where she would like to play and what materials she would like to use. She knows what her interests are and can pick out an activity and prepare for it without hesitation (see Observation Notes #9). Abbys self-confidence also allows her to be comfortable in dealing with social conflict. When there is trouble with sharing toys or taking turns on a desired activity, she knows how to get her point across in an effective and acceptable fashion by using her words and her manners (see Observation Notes #4). CREATIVITY Abbys use of many different art materials and imaginative play shows how creative she is. She can be found using all types of art materials from paint dotters to crayons (see Pictures 7, 8, and 10). When working on an art project she is very imaginative, one time she was using celery to paint on her paper. Her teacher said I wonder what Abby painted a picture of and Abby said beautiful flowers! (see Artwork Example #3 and Picture #11). Abby also enjoys making art that she can give to her parents, she chose to make a bracelet for her mom (see Picture #2) and she made a clay piece that she said was for her baby brother (see Pictures 3 and 4). Abby enjoys sensory and art projects and does well with working and manipulating all of the different materials we have in the classroom. CONCLUSION Through working with Abby I have discovered that she excels in many areas of her development. She is able to demonstrate success in many different KDI areas. Abby shows her healthy physical development by moving in locomotor and nonlocomotor ways, demonstrated by her elaborate and inventive dance moves. She is able to take direction of the descriptive words she hears in the many songs we listened to in class. She identifies and moves correctly to words such as tiptoe, march and spin. She also choses the correct motions for directional words like up, down, or stop. Abby certainly enjoys feeling and moving to the beat of any song. When it comes to social and emotional development Abby proves every day that she is learning the proper skills to achieve her own goals of independence. She is not only able to, but takes pride in caring for her own needs. She is able to use the bathroom all on her own, she always cleans up after herself at meal times, and she knows how to put her things away and get ready for the day. She even helps other children in accomplishing their goals when they need help. Abby is also building the proper verbal and social skills to be able to handle her own social conflicts, she has the ability to express herself positively and shows little frustration when attempting to get her point across to the adults and other children. As far as cognitive developments, Abby is showing a lot of new strengths in the areas of counting objects, sorting and matching objects, and anticipating a sequence of events. She knows her daily routine and can remember and describe what activity comes next in the classroom. She loves to count things out loud and can even match the correct numbers to the amount she is counting out. Abby has also shown a development of seriation skills as she is beginning to understand the concepts of compare/contrast and building patterns. The area of development that Abby has shown the most progress in would be her language skills. Over the past few weeks her verbal skills have become much stronger. She is starting to put many more words together and her pronunciations have become increasingly fluent with much more clarity. She demonstrates these momentous changes when reading symbols out loud. She can name and recognize many letter, shape and number symbols. She can even read her own name and find where her things are or where they belong by looking for her name on different items. She also enjoys reading and listening to different stories and describing what she sees in the illustrations. When it comes to approaches to learning Abby is very independent and shows a great deal of self-confidence. She is able to make her own decisions and branch off from the group to find where she enjoys working. She knows what she likes but also makes an effort to discover new materials. When Abby sets a goal for what she would like to do for an activity she knows how to follow through with it. She sticks to her plans and even when she has to wait for her turn for something she knows how to solve those minor social setbacks and is always a good sport with the other children. If ever there is a conflict she does well with communicating and resolving issues there may be with her fellow classmates is a calm and caring way. Creativity is one of the areas Abbys skills continue to grow. She absolutely loves to use all different mediums to create works of art. Some of her favorites are play dough and painting (and of course glitter). Her creativity can be seen in almost everything she does. Her dance moves, art work, and imaginative play show her wide array of artistic abilities. Whenever there is music playing you can find Abby up in the middle of the room singing out loud and swinging her body to the beat of the music. She especially like days where the shaker instruments are brought out for the children to play with. She does well with active role playing and has a great time imitating the specific actions and sounds of many animals and objects. RECOMMENDATIONS Further developing Abigails many skills would not be a difficult task to take on. Abby has shown a love on learning, discovery, and skill building. She enjoys new activities and never has trouble meeting her goals. An idea to keep Abby on track with her physical development would be to try getting her to work the muscles groups that she is not using as much right now. Abby loves to dance, going out on the playground and doing climbing activities would be a good way to get her moving in ways she usually does not try. Another way she could use her body to continue her physical development would be to find new songs with more complex movements and directions to them. This would get her to use her body in new and interesting movements by doing a fun activity. Since the birth of her baby brother, Henry, Abby has become increasingly self- efficient. She has learned so many new skills and she enjoys doing them. Giving her more opportunities to continue these self-help behaviors would be a great way to increase her social emotional development. Abby already enjoys helping out with cleaning tables, can dress herself (including putting her shoes on), and cleans up her work area without being asked. Things like pouring her own milk, putting her clothes away at home, and getting herself ready to go outside would be great ways to expand these skills. She also has a love for helping others in the classroom as well as with her baby brother at home. Giving her a variety of age appropriate responsibilities in the classroom and at home with her brother would be an encouraging way to develop her skills for helping others. Abbys cognition can be further developed through the continuance of fun and interesting projects and activities. Abby has been making great leaps in her development of cognitive skills and her learning as really taken off. To continue her success in this area she would benefit greatly from the introduction of pattern development. As Abby has shown her ability for sorting and matching, she has begun to show signs of pattern recognition. Giving her activities that help demonstrate and practice simple patterns would be a great new milestone for her to reach. Setting realistic goals for her to reach is always a helpful tool, Abby does well at making goals for herself and can verbalize these goals in the activities she is attempting. She not only sets goals for herself by also completes them with the best outcome she possibly can. She takes pride in her learning so making a time to have discussions with her about what she did and how she accomplished it would be a positive way to get her to recall her actions for the day and see where she made connections and what objectives she met. This would also help her in strengthening her language skills. Getting her into a discussion format and allowing her to take initiative in the conversation would be a great way to improve on her speech and language. Language skills would also be supported by continuing to read in the classroom and encouraging Abby to talk about the story, who was in it, and what happened. Explaining simple concepts and stories will help Abby with her communication skills. Giving Abby a chance at a planning time would be a great way to improve on her approaches to learning. She does well with making decision on the short term about what she would like to do and what areas she would like to play in, but adding a point in the day where she can make a more long term plan for herself would help her set bigger goals and reflect on her decisions afterwards. She would have the ability to learn her own personal schedule and anticipate what she will be doing as the day goes on. Abbys creativity skills are a very easy subject to expand on. Abby loves all things arts and crafts and is open to using all different types of materials. Add new and exciting materials to the classroom would give Abby the opportunity to further her creativity. Another way to develop her creativity would be to give her more of a chance to do free art. Making her own projects without having a pre-determined idea of what it is supposed to be would be very useful and help her make her own decisions with her art. Open access to all materials would be a great experience and would be something Abby would fully enjoy. Including real life materials into the classroom, instead of just plastic toy replicas would also allow Abby the chance to explore her imagination and get her to think creatively.
My time spent with Abigail over the past few months has been wonderful. It is amazing to see how far she has come since her first day and how much she has been learning. I will always have a special place in my heart for her and look forward to supporting her through her continued growth and development. She is truly a remarkable child. I would like to thank her parents, Bonnie and Michael, for allowing me to spend the time with Abby, for being so open and patient with me, and for always keeping an interest in my class and assignments. Your help and encouragement have helped greatly! I would also like to thank Shannon Richardson, Abbys teacher, for not only allowing me to drop into the classroom whenever I could fit it in my schedule, but also for making feel as though I were part of your class. Last, but not least, I would like to thank our Director, Cheryl Mueller, for being so understanding and supportive as I balance becoming a new lead teacher and at the same time completing a pretty hefty load of classes. Your consideration and reassurance has been an enormous help in keeping me calm through such a busy time.
(Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy) Heath Massey-The Origin of Time - Heidegger and Bergson-State University of New York Press (2015) PDF