Doing Observations

[Josiegirl]

How does one actually observe and record dcks' behaviors? I know this should be ab easy one but I've sat down to do it a couple times and either what I wrote sounded silly or I sat for 30 seconds before I started involving myself. But some of these kids I know well and can predict how they'll react, what they'll do, etc. How do I separate all my thoughts from simply observing and recording? What am I looking for, what's not important?
My observations sounded like a bunch of jumbled sentences instead of anything useful.
Any suggestions? Thanks!!

[KidGrind]

_________ (11 mos. old) waves goodbye to his mother at drop-off. He places his hand over his mouth and puts it down, mimicking his mother blowing a kiss. He says, "Dye-dye." This shows that he is starting to use an expanding expressive vocabulary. This shows that he is able to relate words with signing and hand gestures.

[Angelsj]

You do need to remain objective and not involve yourself unless there is a dangerous situation evolving.
Jumbled sentence are ok as long as YOU can translate them. Also I would not interpret while observing. Just the facts ma'am.
Coloring at table - 2 min
Runs to trains and dumps them- 1 min
Runs to block bucket, begins to stack blocks, three blocks and knocks it over
Restacks and knocks over block tower, highest five blocks- 7 min
Puts blocks in bucket- 1 min
Etc, for your time period.
You can evaluate and rewrite neatly later.

[Dilley Beans]

I think everyone documents life differently. For abuse and neglect records objectivity is important, to be used by DHS. But as long as you're journaling in your style you should be fine. Stating facts like "waived hello" and "pooped on potty" are good, but I think you will be better at it and more likely to enjoy journaling and do a consistent job long term if you do it the way it feels most comfortable. Try bullet points, full paragraphs, whatever, until you're happy with it. If it is needed information, you will have it to look back on.

[kendallina]

It depends on your purpose for observing. Is it to record fun anecdotes for parents? Is it to observe development? Is it to observe to see what might be causing a behavior?

If it's for fun anecdotes, well, that's easy, just write down the fun stuff.

If it's to observe development, then write things down when you see them pick up a pencil (observe their grasp) or when they go from sitting to standing (for a baby), etc. Often when I plan a cutting activity, for example, I grab a pen and paper and look at each child and how their holding their scissors, which hand their using, etc and write it down for each child right there.

If there is a problem behavior that you're trying to get to the root of, then sit down (not super close) to the 'offending' child and just write. Write write write only what you see. i.e. "child picks up paper, turns around, looks at red crayon, other child picks up red crayon, first child hits other child" Don't intervene unless you HAVE to, this is why it might help to sit away from where the child is.

Previous posters are right that you want to make sure you are just writing down what you see. So, instead of saying, "Child was angry" say, "Child furrowed their brow".

Hope that helps.

[Josiegirl]

Thank you all, you've been very helpful!
A multitude of reasons why I'm doing this, all of which you mentioned kendallina.
This is one thing I wanted to add to my IPDP because I've never really sat down to observe the kids before. I have a challenging dck plus a dck that is a bit slow in a couple developmental areas so I wanted to help each of them in different ways. But just having it all roll around in my head is harder to do.
If I can devise a routine that might make our days flow a little easier, it'd be great.
Plus I never really thought about writing down the cute things that happen every day(and there are many that I forget)to relay to dcps.

[Blackcat31]

Here is a really good page about observation and assessment.

It also has a couple options for different ways to observe/record.

Lots of good/useful info!

http://www.brighthub.com/education/early-childhood/articles/104837.aspx