Background Information

Personage: 3-5
Fictional name: Billy(The name of the child has been changed to protect privacy)
Location: Eccles Child Development Center
Brief description: observation of a 3-5-year-old boy while at daycare.

Biological Development
When I was observing Billy II noticed that his body shape and size seemed to be average for
a boy his age. When compared to his classmates he was a little bit taller than most. I noticed
that he has grown out of his toddler stage and has lost his infant's belly but has not yet
developed longer limbs. Billy is still growing and developing and will reach his lowest BMI in the
next year or two (Berger,2016,p.158).
When I was observing Billy I also noticed he is still working on some of the basic motor skills.
I noticed that he was able to use his fine motor skills to tie and clip toys together. I noticed that
Billy liked to build he was very creative. He liked the lego building blocks and was able to put
them together independently. He attempted to put some blocks together but it wasn’t working
after trying and failing he gave up and moved to the next activity. Billy is still developing his fine
motor skills and will be better next year as he will be more developed(Berger,2016,162).
I noticed that Billy was very observative. When Billy found a toy he enjoyed he would go
back to the same spot and search for more toys like it. Billy made a giant tube that he carried
around and found toys to put inside of it. He was able to take things apart and use the things
around him to entertain himself.

Cognitive Development
Billy was very imaginative and pretended that the toys were something else. At the beginning
of the video, Billy had a large tube and he was pretending that water was shooting out of it. The
other kids were pretending also and one kid even tried to block the imaginary water. Billy
thought it was really funny and he seemed to enjoy participating in imaginary play. Billy and his
friends were creative and created things in their imagination that they could play with. In
symbolic thought, an object or word can stand for something else(Berger,2016,p.165). Billy
wasn’t shooting water out of this tube but he was using his imagination to shoot water out of this
tube he made.
I noticed that Billy was able to talk in full sentences. The sentences he used weren’t perfect
but he was using more than one-word phrases to communicate. I observed that Billy was using
an average of four to six words or more per sentence, for example, he would say” do you
remember the names I gave them” and “ no I want to keep it a secret”. Billy was able to
communicate with his friends and with his teachers. Billy talked a lot and was even able to ask
and answer questions. He is still developing his speech and vocabulary. Billy should be able to
say up to 5,000-30,00 words by next year when he is six(Berger,2016,p.175)

Psychosocial Development
In my observation, I noticed that Billy was very patient and was very self-regulated. In the
video, a boy ran past Billy and hit his tube that he was playing with and Billy just responded with
“hey” and let it go. Billy had great control over his emotions he wasn’t mad, sad he didn’t let the
boy bother him. In the textbook, it talks about effortful control(Berger,2016,p.194) Billy had great
control over his emotions.
In our textbook, it talks about Mildred Partners’ five stages of play. The first is solitary which
is the ability to play by yourself. The second stage is onlooker which is the ability watching
other kids play. The third is parallel play which is the ability to play with others near you but not
together. The fourth stage is associative ability to interact with children, share toys but not taking
turns. The fifth and last stage is cooperative play which is children playing
together.(Berger,2016,p.198) I observed Billy participating in all of these stages of play. For
example he was participating in associative play when he would let the kids put the marbles on
the tube.

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