When you really see the child, you get to know her and see more of her abilities, interests, and personal characteristics. Knowing each child helps you to plan individualized and developmentally informed activities. Look at what the child does and says without evaluating or labeling.

Observation is an essential part of your practice that supports you to understand the individual needs of each child in your care. As you know every child is unique. Observing children enables you to learn about and enjoy the unique qualities of each individual child.

Observation can also be described as paying close attention to a child's behaviors, interactions, activities, and interests, and noticing all aspects of the child's development. 4. Both definitions stress the importance of observing with intention and observing to learn about a child.

Observation is often seen as one of the most simple, yet effective methods of assessing young children as they develop. For an early childhood educator, observing a child begins by noting how each child behaves, learns, reacts to new situations, and interacts with others.

Observation is a very important part of science. It lets us see the results of an experiment, even if they are not the results we expect. It lets us see unexpected things around us that might stimulate our curiosity, leading to new experiments. Even more important than observation is accurate observation.

Observation helps us assess children's progress; we can find out about the specific care and learning needs of each child. We can then plan next steps in children's development and learning. To find out about a child we need to observe them in a way that is valuable to the child and makes best use of our time.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, children can also acquire prosocial behaviors through observational learning. Watching someone cooperate, share, take turns and demonstrate altruistic acts can teach children to show those behaviors too.