How Does Observation Support Children's Development
Observations, assessments and planning all support children’s development and learning. Planning starts with observing children to understand and consider their current interests, needs, development and learning. Observation is the process of watching the children in our care, listening to them and taking note of what we see and hear from them. When children participate in child-led activities, we record and assess them through observations. In my setting when children first attending and before we have gotten to know them, we record more observations so that it can help us build up a picture of the child. Observations of children are vital because each child has a unique set of abilities and observations in different situations capture these
…show more content…
Without observation, overall planning would simply be based on what we felt was important, fun or interesting, and it might not necessarily meet the needs of the children in our care. Carrying out regular observations is vital because it ensures that we put the child at the center of our practice. We can discover what new skills and abilities children develop over time through observation. For example, when a baby can sit up steadily, when a child can pour their own drink or think about somebody else’s feelings, assign meanings to the marks they have made on paper. Observation enables us as practitioners to identify each child’s likes and dislikes and their responses to different situations such as care routines or when they encounter new people. We can find out which experiences, routines or activities a child seems to enjoy or to find difficult and any that seem to make them anxious. Observation helps us assess children’s progress by analyzing the information we have gathered; we can find out about the specific learning needs of each child. We can then plan for the next steps in children’s development and learning, and much of this needs to be done based on what we have found out from our own observations and assessments of the
Without observation, overall planning would simply be based on what we felt was important, fun or interesting, and it might not necessarily meet the needs of the children in our care. Carrying out regular observations is vital because it ensures that we put the child at the center of our practice. We can discover what new skills and abilities children develop over time through observation. For example, when a baby can sit up steadily, when a child can pour their own drink or think about somebody else’s feelings, assign meanings to the marks they have made on paper. Observation enables us as practitioners to identify each child’s likes and dislikes and their responses to different situations such as care routines or when they encounter new people. We can find out which experiences, routines or activities a child seems to enjoy or to find difficult and any that seem to make them anxious. Observation helps us assess children’s progress by analyzing the information we have gathered; we can find out about the specific learning needs of each child. We can then plan for the next steps in children’s development and learning, and much of this needs to be done based on what we have found out from our own observations and assessments of the