Work Samples Najebah Haidary

Introduction I observed 3 ½ year old children during free playtime at Mother’s Day Out preschool. The teacher set up three areas for children to explore. She set one table for drawing, putting some white sheets of papers and makers on it. The other table had different kinds of blocks on it. The other side of class on the carpet, there were Lego boxes and its table for children to play. Children were playing in all of those stations. Later they came to drawing area. I started looking at a boy and he said, “I want to draw a submarine.”

Work Sample Me: Tell me about your painting. Z: I didn’t paint. Me: Oh, I am sorry you are drawing something. Tell me about your drawing. Z: This is a submarine. Me: What are these? (pointing at three circles) Z: These are three windows and people feed the fish from it. Me: Tell me about these? (pointing at both sides of the submarine) Z: With this the submarine push the water away. Me: What are these two things in both sides of the submarine? Z: This is a fan. Me: Tell me about these blue lines. Z: This is water (he started making some other lines at the bottom of the submarine). Me: What are you drawing now? Z: I draw wheels so the submarine can drive on land. Me: Do you like submarines? Z: yeah. Me: Would you like to ride one? Z: I am done with my submarine (he got up and was trying to go away). Me: Thank you Z for telling me about your drawing.

Analyzing the observation The analysis of the children’s art work shows us about their abilities on what stages they stand. Their work shows the development of their motor skills, language, social/emotional, and cognitive. This little boy was in the pictorial stage because he drew variety of marks that made his picture. Each line or marks represent ideas in his mind such as circles for windows; another spiral line is a fan, and straight lines with circles from one side of the submarine represented the wheels. His language was great, He knew about all the parts of the submarine, and he was talking with expanded sentences and was able to stay in task. His fine motor skill was great too, since he had control over his fingers around the marker drawing straight lines, circles, oval, and zigzags. Intellectually he was familiar with submarines and how it was functioning. At the end of our conversation he was drawing some wheels for submarine and he knew that through wheels the submarine can drive on the land. He also counted the number of the wheels and said this submarine has 7 wheels. Everything that he did, showed that he was within the developmental range.

Work Sample (continued) Me: Tell me about your painting. E: I paint a face. Me: What color is this? E: Orange. Me: Is this your favorite color? E: yeah, I like red, my mom likes red too. Me: What are these? (pointing at the eyes) E: eyes. Me: How many eyes this face has? E: 2 Me: What shape is the eyes? E: Circle, triangle nose and rectangle mouth. Me: Do you know what our eyes are for? E: mm. Me: We see every thing through our eyes. What is our nose for? E: Smelling. Me: Yes! Our nose is for smelling and breathing. Me: What is our mouth for? E: For eating.

Analyzing the Observation The three year old girl answered well based on her knowledge to the questions. Cognitively, she understood that nose is for smelling, and mouth is for eating. She had control over her fingers, hand and arm because she was able to spread the paint all over the paper plate with the paint roller. She was pushing the roller back and forth as straight lines and sometime rolling around the edge of the plate in a circle motion. This shows that she is in the basic level of art or basic forms stage. Developmentally in the use of collage, she was in the second stage because she used the glue stick and glued the eyes, nose, and mouth in the face. She did demonstrate all the skills within the right range of development. As a result of these observations and conversations with this little boy and little girl, I now know that through art works we can better know the children and their capabilities. We know that these kids are creative and have some excellent ideas that some of the teachers aren’t even aware of them.

Other work samples of 3 year olds