Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Observation 11

The children played on an obstacle course that had balance beams, blocks, slides, benches that were placed on a see-saw that allowed them to rock back and forth and much more. Some children went counter clockwise and some started clockwise on the obstacle course which turned into conflict when they would meet up in the middle. Boy #1 decided to sit on one of the blocks. Boy #2 was trying to walk through. Boy#1 didn't want to move out of the way so he was holding up the rest of the kids. The teacher had to talk to boy 1 and tell him it wasn't a sitting area and he was holding up his friends behind him. He didn't want to move, but he finally got up and continued walking around the course. At one point him and boy # 3 bumped into each other when they were walking opposite ways, and boy #1 told boy#3 to move. Boy#3 said "no you move, your in my way" they both didn't want to move, and began pushing each other out of the way. They were standing at a narrow angle so it was difficult for them to hold their balance. Finally Boy #1 got distracted when he saw his friend who got to class late, he said hello to her and got off the course and ran off to play with his other friend. One activity i would choose to create is having them gather around and play red light, green light. I would divide them into groups of two so there wouldn't be so much confusion. I would have the children rotate in being the one to say red light, green light, when to go and stop. This would be a good exercise to see who is listening, and who just follows the crowd. It would give them a chance to multi-task by listening, and playing in control at the same time.