Infant Observation
Anecdotal Record: When I first arrived at the house the church converted into a child care facility, I noticed the rooms were small, but comfortable. There was music playing, a classical song that I later found out was from the Baby Mozart CD. There were cribs in one room for the seven infants, and there were two female caregivers. One woman came forward and introduced herself as Sonia, the other was bottle-feeding a baby. They showed me the kitchen, where I washed and dried my hands. The room was for infants up to “toddling” age, then the toddlers go to another house for care. I observed five infants on the floor playing, one was in a playpen and one was being bottle-fed by a caregiver, Debra. The infants were playing with a variety of toys such as: blocks, foam books, a Fischer Price learning table, and stuffed animals that had materials inside to make them squeak or make a crunching sound. Various knicknacks were displayed more for sensory purposes than for the child's amusement to play with. Debra said that most of the infants were disinterested in books at this phase. I sat down in a rocking chair and picked a particular infant to watch, Kathrine, a nine-month old sitting on a play mat. The play mat was a cotton mat that had various animals on it in different colors. When a baby lies on his or her back and looks up, there are hanging animals of various textures and shapes and colors. I walked over to where Kathrine sat on the mat and tried to interest her in the zebra, elephant and giraffe hanging above her. She looked up for a minute, but was more interested in me. I made faces at her, playing “peek-a-boo” so that she might trust me and like me. However, I hoped she would ignore me so I could observe her more in her naturalistic setting. Kathrine is a Caucasian female with two lower teeth that Debra said she cut when she was seven months old. She likes to sit and crawl on her tummy, and I noticed she dislikes being on her back. She was one of the children to...
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