Tracking children's movements

[butterfly]

Does any one know anything about tracking children's movements around a setting? I'm sure when I was teaching about 8 years a go there were methods u could use to track children's movements so you could see how long they spent in different areas playing with different resources.

[mama2three]

you coulds use a 'time and event sample' where you observe at timed intervals what the child is doing - or a movement and flow chart.
The flow chart uses a plan of the room and then you use dotted lines to track the childs movements between them and note on times. Mine always look a complete mess as a lot of mine flit from one thing to another.
this has some rather basic information , but ok as a starting point. http://www.howto.co.uk/family/childminding/observations_and_assessments/

[nokidshere]

why would you even want to?

[QualityCare]

why would you even want to?

It provides a clearer picture of what the children do, concentration levels and enjoyment and what they do with the activity.

We used to have a sheet with all activities available for that day on it as a rough sketch or photo, paper was divided into 5 columns, start time, activity chosen, how they used the activity did they become bored, frustrated, complete the activity, use it imaginatively or for the purpose it was made for, whether solitary play, side by side or co-operative play and end time. We used this to tailor individual plans for each child, if a child needed more adult in put during certain activities and often picked up on emotional needs that could go un-noticed.

[Ripeberry]

Sounds interesting. Might try that with my mindees :)

[butterfly]

Thanks for that - that's exactly what I was thinking of.

I want to use it as part of my PhD research into quality environments and resources to see which toys are actually used, how they're used and for how long as I want to start changing them but dont want to do it all at once. My tutor wants me to speak to the children about what they want to keep but they're mostly under 2 so that is quite difficult!