Volunteering at My College Campus

¶ … volunteering at my college campus daycare for my developmental psychology class and have Write

Toddlers

Volunteering at the daycare center at my college campus was highly enjoyable, as well as educational. It allowed for a great opportunity to bear witness to many of the concepts that have been propounded during this semester's developmental psychology class. It was actually quite interesting to see many of the theories and ideas that have been discussed during lectures and read about in various texts put into action during everyday life. The majority of my time was spent with the one-year-olds, who are in an interesting stage of development as they are emerging from the infant stage and are transitioning to the toddler stage, which they will be a part of for at least the next two years. Helping out with these children gave me plenty of opportunity to observe them in their daily habits which, for the most part, consisted of napping, eating, and playing or interacting with both their peers as well as with myself and with the other adults who were helping at the day care center.

One of the most interesting aspects of the three hours I spent with these toddlers during my time at the daycare center was the observing of the gross motor skills of these developing children. Gross motor skills, of course, are the usage of the larger muscles primarily found in the legs and arms, and are inclusive of movements that include the whole body. An example of gross motor skills would be a child lifting himself or herself off of a surface to rise to a standing position. Interestingly enough, by the time children reach one years old they are projected to be able to stand alone, by themselves, with very little help. Not all of the toddlers that I saw during my time at the daycare center had mastered this objective. Most of them were able to right themselves, although there were some who I only saw doing so with the help of adults or with the help of some other object or surface, such as part of their play pens. However, there were some children who were able to evince aspects of walking. These included the babies who could crawl or at least make some rudimentary movements towards crawling -- which most of them were able to do. It has been discussed that most children should be able to walk both forwards and backwards as well as up steps by the time they reach 18 months. Not surprisingly, I was not able to see many children accomplish this task.

As can be expected with children of this age, there was a definite lack of coordination and ability to utilize fine motor skills, primarily due to the fact that they were so young. For example, when it was time for a snack, all of the children had to be fed; none of them were even close to being able to hold their own utensils or to direct such utensils into their mouth to begin eating. However, some of the children were able to show traces of hand-eye coordination during playtime. I saw a couple of toddlers make efforts to throw some of the toys we used to play with them, while others attempted to grab things and to use their hands and arms to procure objects. It was a little surprising to think that just a couple of months previous, they had very little control over any of their bodily functions except for basic reflexes, such as blinking and grasping whatever comes into contact with their hands. Although very few of the infants I saw demonstrated any significant propensity towards being able to hold and object and move it in a definite manner such as that required for scribbling, such an ability is generally known to be possessed by children from the time when they are approximately 15 to 18 months old. Their fine motor skills are projected to increase in dexterity to the point that when the children are a full 24 months of age (and fully immersed within toddlerhood), they should be able to hold eating utensils (such as a spoon) as well as hold their own containers to drink with.

In terms of language development, most of the children I observed were still at the beginning stage of this process which will eventually result in their ability to talk, listen, and to communicate with people at will. The vast majority of the children I witnessed showed indications of their natural proclivity to language -- meaning that they made noises and sounds, particularly when they were playing with one another and with members of the daycare staff. However, very few of them were able to form actual words, or at least any words that I was able to recognize. What was interesting about this aspect of observation was the fact that several of the children were able to make the same sort of sounds repetitively -- if not the exact same sound, then at least something quite similar to it. In this respect and by using this method of "communication," some of the children appeared to be actually talking to one another, although how much understanding they were able to gauge from each other could have been dependent upon other circumstances such as their physical proximity to one another and what objects happened to be near or around them.

Still, there were some children who were able to say a few basic words other than "Dada" and "Mama," although such words were still hard to understand and numbered no more than two or three per child. It was also a little surprising to see some of the children actually understand very simple directives. There were a few who seemed to understand what the word "stop" meant, since when they heard it they knew to desist from the activity which they were engaged in -- which mostly amounted to either playing with their food or playing with one another in a way that may have perceived as "rough" to one of the children.