Observations - help!!

[04zog]

Hello im a newly reg childminder. Im currantly looking after a quite 18 month year old, im stuck on how to start my obs i really cant get on a role with them. I just need some ideas of some and what comes after to follow up? Sorry to ask just really stuck. Thanks in advance

[Wheelybug]

The thing with observations is that they can be quite tricky to do unless you have a pretty good understanding of child development and what a child should be able to do at each age. Although I have 4 children of my own, I still found this really difficult to do when I first started and I think people who have been working in childcare for a while don't always realise how hard it is! What I did when I first started was to look at the EYFS developmental matters relevant to the child's age and look for specific statements that I was pretty sure the child could do. I would pick out a couple each week and then look for instances of the child doing something that provided evidence that the child was capable of that developmental matter. I know this is not how you are supposed to do it, but without a sound background knowledge I didn't know what a child should be doing, so couldn't write an observation when they did something new! Now I don't need to do this, as over the years I have gained this knowledge so can spot immedietely when a child does something new. I know alot of people struggle with next steps. Firstly you don't need to write a next step for every observation. Also alot of the time little ones need opportunities to practise a newly learnt skill or to use it in different situations, so quite often I will write this. Also you could try looking at the next developmental matters statements to give ideas for next steps.

Cathy
www.pre-schoolplay.blogspot.com
www.cathys-childminding.co.uk

[bezi123]

I'm not long reg myself, but thought I would just share what I have done, I have a 15 month old I did loads of simple obs in her first few sessions and took lots of pics for eg. lo picked up ball and threw it then crawled after it and passed it me to throw thats the ob, I then linkef it to areas of development and stuck a pick along side, 2nd ob lo had crayons snd paper i showed her how to scribble she then tried to copy, again linked this to area of dev and stuck a pic next to it. Theres a few more along these lines then my next steps provide balls of diff sizes, textures to throw, provide different mark making materials eg paints, aqua draw. Hope that helps and I'm sure someone more experienced will vome along soon