Reading Picture Books: A Case Study of Declan's Learning at 9 Months

This case study examines the interaction of a 9-month-old child named Declan with picture books, focusing on his learning, recognition, and responses. The observation details Declan's exploration of textures, images, and text, indicating an attempt to identify colors and shapes. Analysis links Declan's learning to the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF, 2009), highlighting his strong sense of identity, connectedness with the world, and confidence as a learner. Evaluation reveals an interest in animals and improved motor skills, suggesting follow-up activities to enhance recognition, such as providing similar and different books, animal cut-outs, and varied sizes of books. The provided assignment brief includes learning stories of Declan engaging in water play, sand play, wooden block play, outdoor play, and play dough activities, offering a holistic view of his development across different settings and experiences.

Reading and viewing pictures books
Child; Declan age ; 9 months old
Setting ; indoor date; 08/01/2018
Description of the observer (what the child were doing during the reading or picture book viewing
time). Like learning recognised and response. Words 150
Declan was touching, remembering the texture of the book and exploring the images and text on the
books. It was found that while Declan was interested in the pictures of animals and cartoons on the
books, he was also touching the area where text is printed. This indicated that Declan was
attempting to identify colours and different shapes of the alphabets. Declan at first covered the text
area of the book to direct his focus on the image of animal on the book. However, he later covered
the face of the animal with his hand and was remembering the write up on the book. Declan was
given two books which he picked one by one. He was engaged in recognizing the images and
learning the different colours, patterns and text illustrated on the image. The colour contrasts
further helped Educator in retaining the attention of Declan on books throughout the session.
Analyse child learning link with learning outcomes (EYL, 2009) ( words 250)
Learning outcome 1: children have strong sense of identity

Declan was able to showcase a strong sense of identity by indicating that he chose to hold one book
over the other as two books were presented to him. Furthermore, he expresses his identity by
constantly avoiding the support of his own hands on the flooring to sit up. Declan was able to sit by
himself without any support and at the same time he was involved in examining different colours,
shapes of animals and text box among other aspects on the book.
Learning outcome 2: Connectedness with the world
It was identified from the observation that Declan was able to experience connectedness with the
world as he was communicating with the educators as well as touched and interacted with the two
different books and closely examined the shapes, colours and objects present on the cover page of
the books.
Learning outcome 3: Children are confident and involved learners
Declan experienced a heightened sense of confidence as the book was given to him on the floor
from where he picked it in his hands. Declan was able to hold the book from only one hand
indicating that he had developed great sense of confidence to hold the book in relatively short
amount of time. Moreover, Declan can be considered as an involved learner as he was more curious
about learning the different colours and animals presented on the books along with the shapes as
the shape of the book was instantly recognised by him.
Evaluation and follow up activities (words 200)
It was found from the overall activity of reading and viewing pictures books that Declan was
interested in the animals more than the cartoon characters. Declan has improved his gross motor
skills as he picked the distinguished and picked the book he wanted with his both hands.
Furthermore, the fine motor skills were improved as he picked the book from his one hand and freed
up his other hand. Declan had used his right hand primarily to pick and move around the books. The
book as an object was both rotated and flipped to check it from the different viewing angles to find
more information from it.

As evident from the evaluation, Declan has become more curious about the animals, shapes and
different sizes of objects along with the ability of recognising things. Hence, following activities can
be performed for follow up to improve his recognition:
1. Giving two same books used in this session to check recognition
2. Providing two different books to check the recognition of the shape and size of books
3. Providing different sizes of books with animal characters to maintain interest
4. Providing cut-outs of animal images to improve the recognition.