Presented are a strategy for recording observations of preschool children, documentation of the strategy in use in a nursery school, and thoughts on the importance of observing for curriculum planning, teacher-parent conferences, and professionalism. The system of documentation includes a daily attendance record, written observations on children's behavior, and a developmental chart on each child. Examples of strategy use consist of three profiles of cases in which a preschool teacher turned to her written records for help in dealing with the problems of excessive absences, a child's need for an extra year of preschool in order to develop social skills, and the inappropriate placement of a child in a developmental kindergarten on the basis of borderline performance on one task on a screening test. Numerous illustrations of actual records supplement the discussion. (RH)