Observation Environment
At the head start program Easter seals, I had the opportunity to observe a partial-day interaction with the 2 year old classroom. The room was decorated with numbers, letters and animal pictures. For safety measures they had appropriate age toys, the door handles where not reachable for the children to open the doors, children were always supervised they were two teachers in the room. This teacher encouraged each child to be the active partner in their learning process, and created a curriculum based on: each child’s individual needs, and interests with a balance of child-initiated and teacher-directed activities. “Circle Time” was the first activity I was able to observe. The teacher asked all of the children to clean up the toys with which they were playing. As she navigated the room, verbally assisting some students, I noticed some students had already gone to the carpet area and sat in “Circle“. There was however, one child who was having a hard time following directions, and would not clean up the Lego’s, he wanted to keep playing. After giving this child 3 warnings to clean up his toys, the instructor proceeded to sit on the floor adjacent to him. She then told him that he could keep his “creation”, on the shelf, and return to it when Circle Time was over but, that he needed to clean the rest of the Lego’s up and come to Circle with the rest of the class. Agreeing to this compromise, he put his creation away and the remaining Lego’s back into the bucket, and headed quietly to the carpet for Circle. In contrast with All children’s Specialty care in Brandon the decoration was colorful and also had some animal pictures in the lab they had a television and also in the room for ultrasounds. There were only two patients during my observation and it was only for a heart ultrasound, one was a 14 year, and a 18 month old baby .