Daycare Observation

Introduction

An ongoing discussion about the way teachers and children interact in daycare settings has been a topic of interest for many people who work and study in the field of early childhood psychology. Starting on June 10, 2013 and continuing through June 14, 2013, I conducted ethnographic field research about the most current ways daycare employees and children seem to interact on a daily basis. The research I was most interested with took place during times of play. Specifically, I wanted to examine how many times teachers and daycare students came into friendly physical contact on an average basis. To collect more information for this study, I entered the realm of children’s daycare via my local Childcare Network facility in my hometown

I had the chance to observe a standard modern-day playground with a class of about 32 kids that also included two female teachers. From watching over the playground throughout the week, I noticed some constant patterns that occurred daily, as well as some events that would occur more sporadically. Amongst the events that occurred timely, I noticed teachers would leisurely walk over to under a shady tree and talk amongst each other during the beginning of playtime. Children, on the other hand, would begin by hurriedly rushing to gather with their cliques or other groups of peers. It normally seemed that there would be a brief period where kids would try to decide what to play and then commence with their activities. The first estimated 20-30 minutes of playtime were always experienced separately by children interacting amongst each other and teachers talking amongst other teachers. When observing the things that occurred differently each day, I noticed that games varied. Some of the games kids seemed to enjoy most were group games like red rover, jump rope, and red light green light. Although, after a period of time, children seemed bored of playing amongst themselves and invited the teachers to partake in activities with them. It was at this time I specifically paid attention to their

Regularly, I observed children run away from teachers and then return to them again while playing. It seemed that when teachers touched a child in a friendly nonthreatening form, that contact let the kid know that they (the child) were doing alright while they explored the environment through play. This suggests, for children, touching a teacher is similar to using them as a checkpoint to make sure they haven’t endured any wrong