Riley Observation

On Thursday, February 23rd, 2017 I observed Riley. Riley is in Ms. Anne’s three to four-year-old preschool room at the Early Childhood Education Center at Minnesota State University Moorhead. While I observed, the preschoolers were having free-time/playtime, where they could pick what they wanted to do for that period of time. After free-time. I observed Riley for approximately 25 minutes. As I sat down to observe Riley, it was the beginning of free time after playing outside. Riley was walking around the classroom with another little girl, Heather. Heather followed Riley around the room. Both girls had stars on them with their names on them (laminated yellow stars) which they carried around with them. Riley would walk around with Heather following her and every yard or so they would stop and Riley would whisper something into Heather’s ear. The two girls would giggle and smile and then keep walking around the room. The stopping

‘M’ is for make a bus,” Riley tells Ms. Anne. Ms. Anne says, “We are going to hang up our name trains in the room, but we can show it to her when she comes to pick you up.” Riley then says, “I want to paint for my grandma.” As she picks up her artwork “Here! Done. Look! Chug a chug a choo choo!” Riley moves her paper around like it is in motion and smiles proudly. Ms. Anne takes the artwork and puts it on the drying rack. Riley gets up out of her seat and says, “Ms. Anne I want to put something on the back!” She walks over and gets her name train from the rack and brings it back to her spot at the table. Riley grabs a blue marker and start to draw. She switches to a pink marker and says, “Ms. Anne look! My hair!” and continues to draw. “I’m going to make a girl monster with a mask.” She looks over at the boy’s name train and leans over to point at a letter. “That’s the letter ‘C’,” she states and then goes back to coloring. “Ms. Anne look at the girl monster with a mask. Ms. Anne, she is a good