During the day, I was mainly moving between children and trying to help certain children out when they needed it. For example, X (boy aged 3) who cannot speak English clearly. I was mainly focusing on him as he had distanced himself from the children in the group. When his mother would drop him off at the door, he would always cry and be upset that she would be leaving him.

Therefore, I wanted to make him feel comfortable in the setting and give him some reassurance. Whilst the other children were playing with blocks, lego and play dough. I noticed him grab hold of a Montessori activity involving colours. The activity was based around a grid of squares which had different colours on them, and the names of these colours was on a separate piece of paper which  needed to be connected to each of the colours.

Hennessy et al (1992) day care settings promote language development – particularly if it is based around real conversations and not giving instructions. For example, if the child is telling the practitioner something or if they are having a normal conversation.

I asked him “Z, would you like to match the colours?” he responded “Yes”. After joining all the colours correctly with the names of them. He said “Miss, I tell you the colour”. So I nodded and responded “Sure!”. He began to name the colours: “Yellow, blue, green, white…” Most of the names he had said with a different pronunciation – I let him carry on until he said he was finished. Then we went through them together, with him repeating them after me.

The week’s theme had now changed to learning about seasons. The children were learning about the four seasons and what whether occurs in all of them.

We were all sat around the carpet, whilst one practitioner asked the children what they would like to do. The majority of children led towards something being played on the computer. Therefore she put on a sing a long song for the children explaining the seasons. As she was putting it on a four year old boy (B) turned around and said to me “Winter is snow and summer is sun!” and smiled.

We then went on during the day, doing Montessori activities based on what the children wanted to play with and learn. Surprisingly some of the children chose to learn about seasons and were interest in finding out more.

This week’s theme at the nursery is farm animals. Therefore, myself and the children spent the day talking about and naming farm animals.

I worked in small group of 3 (E, O, J). the focus in this group with based around language and pronunciation. We completed some Montessori activities which involved the children playing around with photographs of animals and differentiating whether they live in the sea, air or on land. Whilst doing this, J (child aged 3) told me “Miss, I have fish at home and they live in water. So that means that fishes live in the sea”. He then started reaching for all the animals that had water in the pictures background.

Holt (1989) argues that if a child chooses to watch and listen to an adult, they will begin to make connections between experiences and therefore be intrigued to learn.

The director of the nursery came up to me during the day and said that she was happy with my progress and she wanted to me to be more open with the children and perhaps create my own activity for the children to complete.

Today a new boy had started in the nursery, the other practitioners had told me prior to him coming in that he is delayed within his language development. Furthermore, he does not speak much and he chooses to be very separated from everyone; but he does speak under his breathe sometimes to himself.

The whole time I was at the placement, I was looking after him and was doing activities with him one to one. It was quite hard adapting to the things that he could and the things that he had found difficult. For example, when everyone else was having food at the tables, he would not eat. He only ate cereal and crackers and never sat around a table. However, despite how difficult I found this – it was interesting to gain a different experience within the nursery.

He would always run back and forth towards the table to grab some cereal but then would run to the other corner and play with wooden blocks with pictures on animals on them. When playing with the blocks, I sat down beside him and listened carefully to what he was mumbling. I could hear “Pig, Pink pink”

Crystal (1984) suggests that some children may be delayed within their language development or they could simply not be comfortable enough to speak in the setting.

The other woman working there told me at the end of the day that I had done well, and that he had shown great interest in me. She was shocked that I had done well with him even when he was screaming and crying.