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What Happened:

The children were engaged in pretend play in the book center, child A was carrying several baby dolls over from the home center and laying them face first down on the mat. Child A place two babies on either side of themself and then began to use both hands to pat the baby dolls while saying “babies sleeping!” Child A continued this action for several minutes before stopping, and standing up, they picked up both of the baby dolls from the floor and walked back to the home center with them.

What it Means:

You demonstrated your ability to participate in pretend play through your ability to use the baby dolls to imitate how you have observed your educators and family care for babies. Additionally, you displayed your growing vocabulary through the way you were able to describe what you were doing when patting the baby dolls.

Opportunities and Possibilities:

Child A’s engagement in pretend play has allowed for reflection on how the children’s ability to participate in pretend play can be further developed. We can further the children’s learning by providing materials to enhance their pretend play. Some of these materials could include adding things like play cribs, pretend cleaning supplies like brooms and mops, play purses and phones, etc to the home center. This will help to give the children to further advance their learning by using these materials to display what they have observed from the adults in their lives.

Connection to EDU Documents:

Child A demonstrated their developing symbolic thought through their ability to act out patting the babies to sleep (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014a) [ELECT 4.7, Toddlers]. Additionally, child A displayed their level of expressive language by verbally expressing what they were doing when saying “babies sleeping!” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014b) [ELECT 3.2, Toddlers].

This learning story allowed me to reflect on how observation young children are and how they notice and pick up on everything that we do as educators. This makes it incredibly important to consider our interactions with others and the example we set for the children in our care as they may start to model those interactions.

References

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2014a). Excerpts from ELECT: Foundational knowledge from the 2007 publication of “Early learning for every child today: A framework for Ontario early childhood settings.” Toronto: Author

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2014b). How does learning happen? Ontario pedagogy for the early years: A resource about learning through relationships for those who work with young children and their families. Toronto: Author.