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Leo has been amazed with the climbing structures around the room. Today his curiosity peaked when he was at the bottom of the structure looking up at the top. He watched as his peers went up the stairs and down the slide, creating a plan as to what he should do to get to the top. He began to climb up the stairs, first on all fours until he reached the top, then went down the side and decided to go again. This time he attempted to go up the stairs backwards carefully trying to place his foot on the next step without falling. He used his hands to help him up until he chose to go up on all fours again. He tests out climbing up the slide, focusing on placing his feet in the right spot, balancing himself as he reaches half way and slides back down.  Leo is laughing and clapping his hands as he continues to climb up alongside his peers. This play continued for quite some time as Leo continued to climb up and down the play structure, using different parts to expand his experience.

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Toddler Observation video pictures 002.avi

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While watching Leo in this play experience, we see him demonstrate 5.1 gross motor skills, specifically climbing. As he begins to climb up the stairs the first time, he takes one foot at a time until he reaches the top. His curiosity and time spent in this play as well as his testing of different theories on how to get up the stairs demonstrates a strong sense of engagement. After sliding down, the first time, Leo attempts to climb up the stairs backwards as well as climb up the middle section of the play structure, at one point even turning around on the stairs to climb back down. His strong sense of engagement allowed him to explore the play structure by using his body to test different ways to get up and down. As Leo is climbing the play structure, he is also demonstrating 1.3 Parallel Play as he plays alongside his peers without any interactions. They are often climbing up together, or sliding down together but there is no actual sharing of thoughts and ideas. Before climbing alongside his peers, we see a brief period where Leo watches the other boy climb the stairs. He watches and begins to follow him up the rest of the steps, demonstrating 1.1 social interest. We see through this play that Leo is showing us his growth in both the physical and social domains. Through supporting Leo’s natural curiosity, we see his willingness to try new things and his focus grow.

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Leo was exploring the play structure and interacting with other children as he developed his motor, parallel play, and social abilities. Leo needs additional opportunities to develop these talents, and we as educators want to help him. Leo will be given more of these chances by having access to soft climbing toys, wobbling boards, climbing arches that can turn over and rock back and forth, and indoor climbing toys. This would be set up in a corner of the room. To provide Leo the opportunity to investigate various objects and setups, we would have all these climbing activities arranged around one another. We would have a set time for them to play and utilize them, and that's when the gates surrounding them would come off. Focusing on the way the materials are set up, we are also thinking about encouraging Leo's social developments. If we place enough materials in this area, but ensure they are not too close to one another, we can encourage parallel play. The children would be engaged in similar materials in relatively the same space, but may not engage which is what we saw in the play experience. We would be supporting the socialization with Leo and peers as well with Leo and educator. Leo will receive words of encouragement from us when we converse with him. Some verbal techniques we'll employ include: "Can you show me how you get up the stairs to go to the slide." and "Show me how you can climb up these stairs." or “Wow, you are so brave." As Leo was climbing and descending the steps, he was honing his 5.1 gross motor abilities. We want to offer him several kinds of climbing structures so that he may develop his motor skills. He may have greater opportunity to explore and discover new ways to engage with the structure due to the variety of materials, structure and organization that we provide.

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1. Do you have any experiences where Leo is testing his own boundaries through climbing? I wonder if he enjoys going to the park.
2. Does Leo have many interactions with others outside of childcare? If so, how does he play with these individuals?

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To further our documentation, we should utilize the Ipad for both photographic and video evidence of these experiences. Using videos will help not only us as educators to watch the experience but also share with families exactly what Leo’s experiences look like. We are able to observe the exact skills he practiced, and how he maneuvered through the structure using his body to explore. We can use clips of videos to share with families, and pictures to use in portfolio's or displays throughout the classroom. We can also use the videos to look back on for ourselves to help with documentation, and to show the child so that they can observe their experience from a different perspective. “For investigations like these, video can give a sense of kinesthetic learning that involved, the grace and balance that’s developing...” (Stacey, 71). The idea of still photographs from videos may be of interest in this documentation as well. We could capture moments of Leo moving throughout the various structures and climbing objects.

Stacey (2015) also discusses the importance of everchanging documentation. “If your documentation is always hung in the same space or hung in the same way, families may pass by without a glance” (Stacey, 72). This relates to the next tool we would like to use, which is the use of sticky notes. Sticky notes that are posted in a particular area, preferably on a board that all educators can access, allows families to notice when a new sticky note appears. Educators, children and families will be able to build on this with the ability to add their own sticky notes, offering new thoughts and perspectives.

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We must include the perspectives of children, families, and educators in pedagogical documentation in order to broaden our experiences. By capturing and uploading direct quotes and dialogue, we can embed children's voices into sticky notes. This method is available to any educators who can add their observations to the sticky notes as they see fit. In this manner, we may take into account all possible observations and viewpoints from educators. The many comments regarding the experience and what we have been noticing in the classroom are available for families to read. Families can now talk to us about what's going on, their opinions, and viewpoints, and even share quotes and conversations they may have had with their children. We can broaden our experiences after Leo's family receives the questions. We inquired about Leo's love of parks and whether or not he has ever had the same experiences with his family. If so, we can put images of several parks, write experiences about what the family observed Leo doing on our sticky notes, and encourage Leo by using words his family uses.

Colleagues voices - After discussing Leo's experiences outside of childcare with his family, we can incorporate elements from his home environment, such as climbing and park visits, into our experience. Leo's adventures at the park may be documented in photos, or we may publish images of nearby parks. As we continue to observe Leo's experiences using his body to explore and his interactions with his friends, we could be document these moments and interactions in a binder using pictures, quotes and perspectives from all educators who work closely with Leo. Sticky notes would be useful in this situation as we can combine the direct quotes and educators observations and ideas to complete the documentation. All Educators would have access to the board of sticky notes, having the ability to add new perspectives, observations and interactions.

Children's voices - Children's quotes incorporate their voices into the documentation, and we may use quotes from the videos we record of Leo to describe how he interacts with his peers. The video can assist us in capturing any exchanges of discussion that may have taken place. In order to express things that children have said or expressed, we can also use sticky note notes.

Family's voices - We could compile all of our information into a book that would have images of parks and various climbing equipment, after talking with Leo's family about his other experiences. We may include photos taken of the kids and Leo on various playsets and structures to share back with the family. The observations and notations we wrote on our sticky notes can be incorporated to assist in explaining the image and the events we observed Leo going through. Leo's parents may be made a part of their child's learning story by receiving a copy of the book including his explorations and thoughts. This would enable them to see what their child is going through and feel included in that experience. Additionally, we can utilize this to elicit information from parents about their kids and broaden our comprehension of Leo's climbing-related experiences. We can inquire, "Aside from climbing, what other activities does Leo enjoy?" "Is Leo interested in other forms of physical activities?", "Does Leo enjoy doing hands-on work? or "Is Leo an active child?", etc. This would create stronger relationships with our families and the sticky notes would be another invitation for them. Sticky notes imbed the families voices by inviting them to add their own thoughts and perspectives. Leo's family may notice the board of sticky notes and read through them, while adding conversations and experiences they have had with Leo.

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These soft climbing toys can be used to help children like Leo explore and better develop their motor skills. Children have more opportunities to explore because of the variety of structures that can be made using these climbing toys.

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Ministry of Education. How does learning happen?: Ontario’s pedagogy for the Early Years. (2014).  https://files.ontario.ca/edu-how-does-learning-happen-en-2021-03-23.pdf

Ministry of Children and Youth Services. (2007). Early learning for every child today: A Framework for Ontario Early Childhood Settings. https://www.fanshaweonline.ca/content/23S/1475064-ECED-1076-(10)-23F/Excerts%20from%20ELECT1.pdf?_&d2lSessionVal=uaLYxmo85BmH1BG2cyiPjDi6l&ou=1475064

STACEY, S. (2015). Pedagogical documentation in early childhood: Sharing children’s learning and teachers’ thinking. REDLEAF PRESS.