Observation Paper About Mats

The classroom that I observed on March 21st was called, “Caterpillars.” The students I observed were playing on the 3rd floor, blue mat. On the 3rd floor, there is an open space for the students to run. There are tricycles, hula-hoops, carts and strollers to push, balls to bounce, and 3D mats to climb on (Seen in images…). On this mat, there is another plush mat with several 3D foam mats they could crawl on (Seen in images…). The students started by simply crawling on the mats that were scattered around the blue mat (Seen in image…). One student stood on top of the biggest 3D mat and said, “I’m on top of the mountain!” From here, that student told the others he was playing with, “We should build a mountain.” The students then lined the mats

The students use the gross motor skills of jumping off the mats, running around to the beginning of the steps, picking up and moving the mats, and climbing on the mats. The fine motor skills that are used are, jumping in place because of their excitement as a friend is finished climbing the mountain. During the basic locomotor skills and fine motor skills, the students have full control of their body. When picking up the mats, the students have to use eye-hand coordination. Another standard and benchmark that was practiced during this play sequence was Cognitive Standard 1: Explores the environment to gain information with Benchmark 1.1: Demonstrates curiosity in the environment. This cognitive standard and benchmark works with this play because the students had to explore the 3rd floor environment before choosing what to play with. Once the students discovered the 3D foam mats, they had to think about what they wanted to do with these mats. From there, they all decided to climb on them. Once climbing on them, one student made the decision to form the mountain with the