Introduction
Early childhood educators play an important role in observing, recognizing, and supporting children’s development (Charlesworth, 2014). In this report, child E has been chose to be observed with different observing methods including running record, anecdotal record and learning story. Child E is a 3 years old boy. His father is a New Zealander, and his mother is from China. He is the only child in his family. Child E dose not speak Chinese but only English, this is due to the reason that both his parents speak English at home and his mother does not want him to learn Chinese. Child E was born in New Zealand and he dose not know much about Chinese cultural. He attends at the center five days per week. His mother often drops him in the morning around 10am and the father picks him up around 6pm. Moreover, child E has just been transferred from the toddler room to the pre-school room two weeks ago. Child E and I know each other in the toddler room. In my report, I will focus on physical and socio-emotional developments and link them with development theories and concepts. I will also discuss how these two domains inter-related to the children’s holistic development.
Physical Development
Physical development is an essential domain that is extremely important for children’s development. The physical development of child E can be seen in all the observations. G. Stanley Hall and Arnold Gesell developed Maturation theory. According to the theory, maturation and growth occur together and they are interrelated. In another word, while a child is physically growing up, the nature and quality are changing as well. “Growth is what happens; maturation is how it happens” (Gordon and Browne, 2014). Furthermore, Gessell transferred his ideas of maturational process into the developmental milestones. The milestones indicate a child’s ability achievement at a certain age (Petty, 2010). The developmental milestone is a useful tool for early childhood