Kidango Center Observation

In my previous observation I was able to go to a Kidango center at Royal Sunset High School, which I now work at and used this center to observe the children at play. At this center it is majority four year olds but also three and five year olds as well. There were many different personalities between the children which brought out a lot of different kinds of play.
The class starts off as free play while the children enter the classroom for the first forty five minutes. There are three tables set up for choice activities, one art table, one writing table, and one manipulative toy table that the teachers set up before the children enter the class. The children also have the options of not going to the table; they could go to the block area, library, or
dramatic play area
This was set in the block area where there is a shelf set up for solid wood blocks and another shelf for flatwood blocks. There were three girls playing in the block area, two of the girls were twin sisters, but they were not the ones building cooperatively, one of the girls was making what she said was a road with the flat blocks. The other sister and another girl were building a castle out of the solid wood blocks. The two girls playing together were not facing the other girl building the road or interacting with her, they were enjoying building their structure tall. When the girls building the road walks away to use the bathroom I noticed her sister who was building the castle with the other girl look behind her where she noticed her sister had left but then continued and grabbed some toy people to enter her castle. A different boy came along to where the flat blocks the girl who went to the bathroom was playing with and started to play with it as it was. He did not destroy it or reconstruct it in any way he simply got a wooden car and used the blocks to drive it on. When the sister who was still there notice the boy she seemed to have gotten upset at the boy and kept telling him he couldn’t play there and that’s her sisters. When the boy refused to leave she got up to look for her sister, brought her back to the blocks and showed here that the boy was playing with what she had built. When she over looked it the two sisters moved to a table activity and decided to stop playing with blocks. What seemed like girls working together cooperatively to create one castle and engaging in object play with each other sticking to a theme, there was also a lot of parallel play going on between the two sisters. They seemed pleased by each other’s company even though one of the girls was playing alone and the other was not. I could tell when that the girl felt more comfortable knowing her sister was right there. What started as three boys passing a car back and forth on the large carpet in the block area soon escalated into five boys tossing and passing a car from one end of the carpet to the other.
At first the boys found one of the smaller cars, in a similar form as a hot wheels brand car, in the bin of toy cars and were just rolling the car back and forth having a good time. Pretty soon other boys noticed what seemed like a lot of fun and decided to join in. There were three boys on one side two boys on the other, and then there were four boys on a side and one on the other. The boys kept switching where they wanted to sit and there was not anyone who protested. As I was sitting aside them I kept hearing “It’s my turn” or “Now it’s my turn” over and over again, I did not ask them to take turns there was no set an order who passes the car to whom they just did what came naturally to them which was having fun. This type of play the children were engaging in is what I identify as associative play. In associative play the children are in a group in the same area with the same material(s) with no set rules or negotiation and that is exactly what I saw going on here. It was intrinsically motivated and freely chosen object
play. As a co-stage manager of the classroom I made sure the right objects are in the right bins for the children so they are familiar where they find it and where it goes when they are done. During this game they were playing I was primarily playing the observer, I almost never took my eyes off the children, and the noticed to. Also I was generally being entertained by the fun they were having. I was laughing along and smiling along with them when the car seemed to backflip or go too far and he children seemed to have noticed me watching as well.