Unit 3 Observation #2

Background Information​:
Person’s age: 3-5 years old
Fictitious Name: I will call the child Juan
Location: Pre-school
Brief Description: Child interacting with their preschooler friends

Biological development

I noticed that Juan is very slim and looks very different than an early toddler. He is now
more developed. His body is now more proportioned and it is said that in this time of their lives
their Body Mass Index is at its lowest it will ever be for the rest of his entire life(Berger, 2016,
158). It is because while he was younger, his body was rounder and chubby. Now, his body has
changed and switched out the baby fat for muscle, and the weight is more in the lower belly.
I am also noticing that Juan has a little hard time focusing on one activity for a long
period of time. He goes from just playing by himself to playing with another kid. He does hold
onto this hollow stick thing he made or something. So, with each new activity he participates in,
he is still holding onto his stick. This kind of behavior of switching from one activity to the other
is showing that he still has poor impulse control, which is defined as the skill to stay focused on
one activity at a time without moving around and getting distracted(Berger, 2016,163).
I noticed that he is also developing his fine motor skills even more. Some examples of
this is that he is now able to easily place marbles in his stick thing and also quickly move it up
and down so that his peer couldn’t reach it(Berger, 2016, 164). He was basically playing a game
that he would taunt her and she would try to grab the pole before he could pull it away. He
showed that he could.

Cognitive development

At the beginning of the video, Juan was playing with other kids and they were imagining
that his stick that he made was a water blaster and he was shooting it all over them, while making
some sound effects to go along with it. This is called Symbolic Thought. This is when a child is
pretending that an object or words means something else(Berger, 2016,165). In this case, he was
pretending that his stick/pole was a water blaster. It was pretty interesting to see how he really
was into the water blaster, then he just stopped and did something else.
I then noticed how his language is. Juan is constantly speaking in the video using long
sentences and including things like who, what, etc. He is developing his vocabulary. It is said
that a child that is around the age of 5 can know around 3,000 to 10,000 words(Berger,
2016,175). Juan was talking a lot to his fellow class-mates.
 Juan was also talking about how he named all of the stuffed animals. He was really
excited about it and it was like he was giving those stuffed animals human-like attributes(Berger,
2016, 166). This is called animism, which is where a child will give life-like attributes to
non-living things, like stuffed animals. Juan seemed to understand, however, that these were not
completely real.

Psychosocial Development
Juan’s emotional regulation seems to be pretty good. He has developed a lot of different
emotions and seems very complex(Berger, 2016,1940). In the video he was screaming a lot
through his weird tube thing. I also think that he wasn’t ever angry. He knew how to control
himself and I think that is really good that he was able to keep his cool the whole time. He also
showed stress in the way he talked when he couldn’t find his yellow marble. He knew how to
sound stressed.
I noticed that Juan was pretty prideful and selfish. He didn’t want to let another kid use
his makeshift pole that he made. He said that he couldn’t play with it and was kind of being a
jerk to him with how he was treating the . The funny thing was that right after Juan said no
about the pole, he asked another kid if he could play with the marble slide thing. He was allowed
to play. In the textbook it is described that children around that age tend to be prideful(Berger,
2016, 194), but it is normal and hopefully the parents will be able to help him know that it isn’t
good to be prideful.
Juan was also communicating a lot with his peers. His social aspect seems to be very well
developed. For the most part he was kind and let all the kids, that wanted to, play with him. What
was interesting though, was that he always seemed to be in charge, and the kids would let him
and didn’t mind at all if he was bossing them around or telling them how to play a certain game.
One thing was that he started a random game and started to keep score. In the textbook it
explains that this is normal behavior. This is called ​Intrinsic motivation, which is when
someone is arising joy from a certain activity.

Reference
Berger, K. S. (2019). Invitation to the lifespan (4th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.