aelfie | Child Observation 1

For my first Child Observation, I decided to make my observation on the child I have been working with closely.

I. Complete Physical Description

A is a very tall and lanky child. He is skinny. His arms are too long and has yet to grow into them. The general shape of his face is a narrow oval and his facial features are also narrow. His skin is pale, not in a "never see the sun" pale but more of a "pure blood Irish" pale. His eyes are clear, and he looks me in the eye most mornings. His hair is straight and messy. It's combed every morning, but it's sufficiently long that it loses it's neatness as soon as his hat comes off. I'm not sure if he needs a trim or if he likes it this way. But the sides are long enough to cover most of his ears, and it gently frames his face. He has a tendency to use his entire hand to smooth the hair down towards his face and continues to smooth his face over. His voice is low and husky, but increases in pitch when emotional. His voice is fairly quiet and has a dreamy quality when he speaks in a "classroom" volume level. His speech is hesitant, he consistently pauses, even when highly emotional, for the specific words he wants to use.

II Movement
A walks on his toes when he's not paying attention. He also has a tendency to shuffle. When not emotionally engaged with classmates while walking, he walks slightly bent over at the waist and neck. But when there is positive emotional engagement, he walks more upright and looks at those around him in the eye.

When twirling the double dutch jump ropes he is unable to get both of his arms to swing equally. His right arm will make a sufficient rotation to get the rope to swing both high enough and wide enough, but he in unable to do so with his left arm even with prompting and reminders. His left arm makes a truncated, incomplete swing and relies on a wrist flick to complete the movement. Which is insufficient, and has a tendency to make the ropes tangle and forces the adult to compensate. He has not yet been able to enter the double dutch ropes, he moves with hesitation and gives off a sense of futility. He vocalizes that he can't do it. He keeps his hands in his pockets when attempting to enter the swinging ropes and rather than jumping straight in, he jumps in sideways with a right foot kick, which throws off his timing for jumping once he passes the first rope.If given the choice A will swing the ropes for either double dutch or single rope rather than jump. And he has some difficulty with jumping a single jump rope as well.

When sitting as his desk, his movements are langourous. There is a dreaminess to him and he moves slowly and thoughfully. When he is emotionally charged there is erratic, quick movements.

Eurythmy: A attempts to copy the Eurythmy Teacher's footwork. i.e. walking on ball of foot first. This ends up making him move very awkwardly high on his toes and also causes a wobbling to his movement. His arm movements are jerky and incomplete. Elbows bent for Ah. Hands limp for A. Did not raise left arm into a full I, hand was level with shoulder, almost straight out. Hands far apart for the O, wrists limp. Hands/arms too far apart for U, almost an Ah and wrists limp. Could not take cues from music or spoken voice. Needed the visual/physical prompt of classmates movement first before taking action. Looks at floor. Head turned at maximum for backwards movement.

III Child's work
Although A's work is neat, it is truncated. The borders on his work, if they exist at all, are simple and "younger" than his age. Blank sides of pages are not filled in with color. When approaching handwriting, which is very neat and readable, he is very slow and meticilous. Each letter of the word he is writing is perfectly and purpously written. He continues to use drawn lines in his MLB to support his writing, and even then they tend to have a slant (there is no consistency for either up or down). His MLB's are shorter than classmates, both in the number of pages and the length of the written work. His work is missing words and sentences that are contained in his classmates books. Although the vocabulary of his free writing and speaking is well above the norm for his age.

In observing A work, I have noticed several things. 1. He is slow to get started. It takes him what seems an inordinate amount of time to get out necessary materials. Then the process of putting pencil to paper seems painful and slow. A word or two will be written and he's staring off into space. 2. He is easily distracted. Too much light from the window behind him? There's a complaint. Child in front of him bothering him? There's a complaint. Too much noise? There's a complaint. There's a cool map in the book? He's hyper focused on it and resists redirection to work. 3. His ability to focus is erratic. He has the ability to focus, but only upon the items he wishes to focus on. The previously mentioned map would have been sufficient to contain his interest and focus for the entire Do'ing part of morning lesson if he had been allowed to do so. It was only at the suggestion that he copy that map for this report did that prompt him to do something. And even then, very little got done as he preferred to gaze at and touch the map. He ran his fingers over several features of the map as if he were trying to read the information it contained through his fingers. In the end, only half of the outline, freely drawn, was completed in the time allotted. He has yet to complete any of the final drafts of his five paragraph essay. While his classmates have completed at least one, several have completed 3-4. He required my help in creating the notes and he dictated the drafts to me, and I wrote them down. This process required a lot of prompting on my part to get him to focus on the task at hand.