Who: Joey
Age: 5
Gender: Male
Where: SNC Children's Center
When: April 7 and April 10 (Inside), April 9 and 16 (Outside)

Circle Time:
Joey is usually a pretty good listener during circle time and large group activities. Sometimes, however, he is easily influenced by his peers and needs to move because he cannot help but talk to them. One thing with Joey that I have noticed is that he is very bright and has good questions, but if he can't ask them or talk when he wants to then he gets very upset, and that is when he begins to act out. I also noticed that Joey usually knows the answers to the questions that the teacher is asking, he just doesn't always share them. There have been several times where I have heard him say the answer under his breath, but he doesn't raise his hand. I often encourage him to raise his hand and share his answers with the class. Other times though Joey will just blurt the answer out and not show his teacher and peers proper respect.

Free Choice:
Joey is often quite the follower lately when it comes to free time. There is one child in particular that he is almost inseperable from. I noticed this a little bit last semester, but he was still content playing with me or other children, but it seems that this semester is has gotten worse and he almost refuses to go to an area without this other child. Joey is a big fan of the block area and is very good using them. He makes some very elaborate structures for a preschooler and he often surprises me. He also does a great job with patterning when using the blocks and can make his structures very symmetrical. I also noticed as I was observing that he is very aware of what blocks will balance where and when he uses the animals, he strategically places them on the blocks making sure that they aren't too heavy.
Joey is also very good when using the small manipulatives. He is able to make some very cool objects by connecting different small pieces into a much larger structure. I often see him making things and then his peers ask him to make them the same thing. He has a good understanding of which pieces will work together and he shows good hand eye coordination to be able to connect them and make them look like the final product that he is trying to create.

Outside Time:
Joey loves playing outside and running around with his friends! He often sticks to playing with the boys, but every once in a while they will chase some of the girls around the playground. He likes playing with the balls on the playground, sometimes this causes some rough behavior outside because they will tackle the person with the ball, trying to take it away from them. This at times needs to be broken up because it ends up being one child on the ground with about 4 other children piled up on top. He also enjoys racing around with the trucks on the playground. He likes to race other kids around the playground while each of them pushes a dump truck.
On top of using objects outside, he also uses his imagination to come up with games for him and his friends to play outside. They often play tag, or use the playground equiptment and some sort of large structure that only one person can be on and all the others want to get onto it. They also like to pretend that the woodchips are something else and that they can be stood on. They often laugh and me and tell me that it's not safe and I need to get to "safety." It amazes me how they can start something like that and it just takes off. It's like they can read eachother's minds because one child will come up with an idea and the others will just join in as though they came up with the idea themselves. I have noticed that Joey does tend to be a good leader when he isn't in one of his moods where he needs to follow the same child around. It seems to me that the others really enjoy Joey and he does a good child of using his imagination to create games for everyone.