Running Head: Preschool Observation

Child Development and Early Learning:

Preschool Observation
Sydney Elisabeth Henderson
Kennesaw State University

This observation was done on a four year old male named William. This observation was
performed in the presence of the childs babysitter in the comfort of the babysitters home.

Preschool Observation

William was born to married hispanic parents, but within the last year, Williams parents are no
longer together. The circumstances for separation are unclear, but William now lives with his
mother, older sister, aunt and uncle. Williams mother works in sales, but his aunt, whom is a
Lead Teacher at a prestigious preschool, helps William with his learning at home. Williams
father lives a great distance from his kids and is no longer in contact with William or his sister
much. William;s sister is one and a half years older than he and attends public Kindergarten.
William lives in an environment that is mostly Spanish speaking. He is babysat roughly
10 hours each day in an English speaking environment, by a woman who was previously a
Preschool teacher. His babysitter takes time each day to make sure William is learning
everything he needs to during this developmental stage. William has little problem discerning
the difference between Spanish and English. Although William does get confused if words do
not have an exact translation from one language to the other. Williams babysitter has stated
that during some of her lessons with William, she has needed ways to translate her directions
from English to Spanish for William to fully understand what is being asked of him (R. Bobb,
personal communication, October 15, 2016).
Vygotsky (1987) states there are three forms of language. First there is social speech, or
speach that is spoken between two people, external speech. Social speech generally begins
at age two. Secondly there is private speech. Private speech is the internal dialect a child uses.
This is the voice in their head and is said to begin at age three. Lastly, private speech is a childs
inner speech that helps them to regulate themselves or how they talk to or reason with
themselves.This speech generally begins around age seven. After observing William during a
few different activities, I felt as though William needed to be taught definitions in both English
and Spanish to fully understand them.
For our mini lesson, William and I will read the nursery rhyme, Hey Diddle, Diddle
Hey, diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;

Preschool Observation

3
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon. ()

Before reading this nursery rhyme, I will ask William if he knows what certain words in the text
mean, such as cat, fiddle, cow, moon, dog, sport, dish and spoon. We will discuss the label in
both English and Spanish as well as form a definition together. According to Vygotsky (1978),
children will learn much through the side-by-side workings with a tutor/teacher.
Starting off this lesson, I asked William about the vocabulary words. I asked him if he
knew what they meant in both English and Spanish. There were a few words that he already
knew. He knew: cat, dog, moon, and spoon. THe words Williams knew he was able to tell
me their name in both languages and their definition in English. William stated things such as
Cats say meow! And they walk around on four legs. Theyre like dogs, but theyre not. And they
love people and people have them as pets. We did this casually and with no pressure for him to
have to know the answers. Afterward, we began with the harder vocabulary words.
William is able to give definitions for some of the words with only the label in English and
others only if the label was given in Spanish at first. The longer we talked, the more concrete his
answers were and the more sure he was of his answers. There were only two words that
William needed to be given the definition. Those words were fiddle and sport. After going
over the vocabulary words, William was quick to repeat the nursery rhyme. Within ten minutes,
he knew the nursery rhyme in its entirety.
After reading the nursery rhyme, William went to play with his older sister. During
his play, William pretended to be a cat jumping over the moon. Next he pretended to be a fiddle
jumping over the moon. Although my observations could have been over and I had fulfilled the
requirements of my assignment, I waited and watched William. He played for a long while as the
characters in the nursery rhyme. He would act out the rhyme and then tell his older sister to. He
repeated the nursery rhyme over and over. William was so excited with his new knowledge he
told his babysitter repeatedly what his new vocabulary words meant.

Preschool Observation

I believe William did in fact need the support of learning in both languages and being
able to draw on his language from home as well as with his babysitter. This connection seemed
to have made Williams learning more concrete. William did learn from this lesson. He
continually showed and stated what he had learned to his parents, his babysitter, his sister and
myself. And he had so much fun while learning his new nursery rhyme!

References
Gliori, D. (2000). The Dorling Kindersley Book of Nursery Rhymes. New York: Dorling
Kindersley
Pub.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In R.W. Rieber & A.S. Carton (Eds.), The collected
works of L.S. Vygotsky, Volume 1: Problems of general psychology (pp. 39285). New

Preschool Observation
York: Plenum Press. (Original work published 1934.)