Bone Development Observation

Sky Barragan, daughter of a good friend of mine is the child I observed for this written evaluation. Sky is four years old with a birthday quickly approaching this upcoming July. The observation took place at a local park in Pasadena that Sky frequents quite regularly for play time. We arrived at the park at approximately nine fifty in the morning and left the park at ten thirty. The park is about five acres and located in a quiet neighborhood of Pasadena, CA. It has a playground, basketball courts, handball courts, and plenty of open grass and trees which make for a calm and peaceful setting. The park was fairly empty with a few adults engaging in morning fitness activities, and the playground was empty. The temperature outside was about ninety
Sky’s legs are about two times the length of her torso, and her arms fall past her hip well into her mid-thigh in length. According to our textbook, “Much of the change in body’s proportions and appearance is due to the lengthening of the long bones of the arms, legs, and fingers (Olsen, Reginato, & Wang, 2000).” The bone development process ossification plays a critical role in the strengthening, hardening, and generating new tissue by the growth plates of the bones which are critical in children’s growth. Some of Sky’s other visible characteristics are her black curly hair, and large almond shaped brown eyes. She has a big grin, and although her front tooth is currently loose hasn’t lost any baby teeth
The reason being, skating hasn’t been introduced yet. Sky has also reached all the fine motor skills milestones of early child development. This is Sky’s second year in preschool, so she has had practice with activities such as turning the pages of a book, grasping a pencil, writing the alphabet and numbers, drawing shapes, and getting herself ready for school which can help with the mastery of such skills. Sky is a very talkative young lady whose speech is easily understood but still sometimes changes the phenomes of words mispronouncing them. Sky uses protoimperatives such as pointing to the monkey bars, and looking to her mother when asking her a question in order to engage mother’s attention. According to Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive development, Sky would fall into the preoperational stage not exhibiting decentration and only seeing her own perspective. From my observation and further knowledge of the child, I would conclude the same. During the observation while being pushed on the swing Sky made a statement, “Mmom look how high I’m going. I’m going to go to the moon.” Such a statement would be considered precausal reasoning. Sky believes that if she were to swing high enough she might reach the moon. I am unsure if this is really what she may think but did not interact during the observation so have