How often is ok??

[Lems]

I have two lo's 20mths and 24mths. Both attend more or less same times and days. 1 child is easy to plan and observe for he'll try most activities. The other child doesn't like/want to do much else than play with same toys, even at groups he returns to same areas/activities as before. So now I'm finding his obs are starting to become very similar to ones already recorded as he's not really extending any of the activities he likes to do no matter how hard I'm trying to encourage and introduce new experiences. I don't want to 'repeat' obs for him. So I'm asking what is the least I can record in his obs/LJ. He attends 3 to 4 hours 4 days per week, he often has to have a nap, we have lunch and school runs in this period. Any advice would be appreciated.

[loocyloo]

you only need to do an observation when child does something new or exciting!

maybe just write in childs LJ that 'A is currently consolidating his knowledge of/enjoying/re-visiting XYZ and you are looking at ways to extend play such as adding people to the blocks, or animals to the cars, putting the cars in messy tray along with cornflakes etc'

i have a mindee who is always doing new things and is excited and enthralled by everything & anything! and i could easily do half a dozen obs a day on him, where as another mindee loves the same things week on week ( only comes one day ) and he doesn't have many obs at all! i put a note in each week to say what has been played with and how i will extend it for following week. ie... 2 weeks ago, mindee spent alot of the day rolling cars in, round & over big bowls. last week we tried rolling balls around, and also had the toy cars & balls going through tubes, plus had cotton reels to roll around. this week i need to get my car tyres checked and possibly changed, so we will watch that, and ask if we can roll some tyres! am also going to ask if i can take my old tyres home ( to roll! ) maybe via the park to roll them down slides! so i don't really have any 'new' obs, just notes on how i'm extending play!

[sarah707]

I look at it over a month and try to do 3 or 4 obs, some with a photo.

Sometimes I will do more if the child has been particularly active ... or a focussed obs if I want to look at something in detail...

Other times I will stick to 3 or 4 filling 1 x A4 sheet with hand written notes linked to the Eyfs.

Hth :D

[appleblossom]

I heard at my EYFS training that we now have to show how the children are learning with reference to the new characteristics of learning which is part of the new development matters. How do you all do this? I'm struggling to decide what to do with this. Do you put it in the observations? But what if you need to describe this for a development you don't have an observation for? I try to keep my obs simple but it seems there is going to be a lot more detail in them now (certainly too much for a post it note:panic:)

Thanks.

[blue bear]

Sarah posted about charastics of learning, she said we don't need to show them with each on as chikdren will keep showing same characteristics over and over so I'm just noting the child's characteristics of learning on the summative assessment which I do three times a year.

Obs don't need to be more detailed or more frequent, after all you will get to know your chikdren inside out and know what they are doing from just watching them play (observations but not written up)

[appleblossom]

Thank you Blue Bear, that's great.

[Ripeberry]

Sarah posted about charastics of learning, she said we don't need to show them with each on as chikdren will keep showing same characteristics over and over so I'm just noting the child's characteristics of learning on the summative assessment which I do three times a year.

Obs don't need to be more detailed or more frequent, after all you will get to know your chikdren inside out and know what they are doing from just watching them play (observations but not written up)

Love your typo 'Chikdren' Sounds like a mixture of Chickens and Children. :D