Observation of Young Children I observed for two and one-half hours from 9:39 am to 11:55 am. The preschool has three teachers and a full enrollment of 24 children, ages 2 and five, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They also have 24 children, age three, on Tuesday and Thursday. On the Friday that I visited, there were 20 children in attendance. There is a large enclosed play area outside. There is a large covered sandbox area with several toys including large plastic scoops, a large metal spoon, plastic bowls, shovels and buckets, a large play structure with a slide and climbing apparatus, a log cabin play house with several tools; such as plastic hammers, wrenches, and saws. There is a big sidewalk that goes around the yard where the children ride the tricycles. There are six tricycles but they were not out for use on the day that I observed. Inside there are many areas for playing and learning. There is a small room that has a cradle, dolls, blankets, dress-up clothes and shoes for girls, child size furniture; table, sink, dishes, and other kitchen items. Also kept in this room is a large roll of paper that can be cut to any length for drawing and painting. In this room is where one of the teachers meets for story time with her group of eight children. The large room is divided into two parts for the other two teachers and their groups when it is story time. The divider is opened when the individual group time is over. In the large room are many different activity stations; easel with two sides for drawing with markers and paints, a fish tank with several fish, papers and crayons, table with small wooden puzzles with numbers on the pieces, small hard rubber birds, owls, and pelicans, a table with a hard plastic surface that lights up, a table with rocks and a magnifying glass, a table with Legos. The setting was a very warm and welcoming environment. This classroom environment prepared the children for kindergarten with charts of numbers, days of the week, colors and shapes the children's names were placed in an individual section of on the cubby shelf for their blankets. The room had a variety of bright colors which display a parent information board, daily schedule, labeled learning centers. They had the learning center in the right middle by the wall. The science area was in the middle of the room. The art area was in the right corner by the wall and supplies and the walls had many pictures of the children art work. On the wall were different pieces of clothing that represented various professions and cultures. The supplies and also the walls had many pictures of the children art work. The floor was half different color carpet and half wooden. Children were divided into small groups and involved in different types of activities. Group one was painting and coloring; Group two was playing with instruments and singing; Group three children was playing with manipulative; Group four was building blocks; a girl was doing puzzles; one boy was reading a book; two children were eating apples and two more children were waiting for their turn to eat apples, they were sitting in “waiting chairs”. One teacher was helping children in the art area and the other teacher visited each group of children for a couple of minutes. According to a theory called animistic thinking, children believe that inanimate objects are alive. Another form of animistic thinking would be when the teacher told a story about monkeys, when the teacher asked where monkeys lived, one child answered. “Monkeys live in the grass and run around from tree to tree, they are small and very hairy.” These children think that these living animals were bad, but they didn’t get the chance to interact with them. However, the fun with the monkeys had just begun. To test the children’s belief in the unrealistic, the teacher asked the children make drawings of grass or trees, and then she tell all of the kids that if they were excellent, the monkey nice enough to let them touch it. While these kids were eating their snacks, the teacher left. One child sat around the tables and shouted that “he was here, he was here,” and another child was looking around the room trying to find the monkey. Overall, Most of the children had beliefs based on what they sensed to be true. The language between the three-year-old children, and the five-year-old child was great. There were some grammar problems that I noticed during the observation at the preschool. The children were very good with sentence structure and words. However, they struggled with prepositions, suffixes and prefixes. For example, he sitted down on me," she hitted me with the monkey," the children are learning that they need to the ed" to the end of some words, but they do not know when it is and when it is not appropriate to do it yet.