Curriculum – Toddler
1 to 2 years
Social Development
To foster feelings of competence:
- provide toys and activities that encourage them to play alone
- provide opportunities for imitation
- provide prompt return responses
- respond to their various emotional moods, and help them to control them in a positive way
- give support when they try to do things on their own
- play music, songs, and action rhymes with many body motions that they can perform
- give them a chance to achieve a new developmental step, a sense of ownership
To develop positive, self-help skills and foster independence:
- to learn how, when and why they should wash their hands, and chances to dress themselves
- to be allowed to use the spoon and cup for themselves at meals
- to be encouraged to pick up toys after they have finished playing with them
Cognitive Development
To enhance language development:
- provide many books and magazines with large and colorful pictures
- more opportunities to play seek and find
- encourage “give and take” games
- more opportunities to find things that disappear
- help in learning the parts of their body
- much practice with various shapes
- provide opportunities for them to learn how to do things in a certain order
- practice in going to get the toys and other things that they want or need
Begin and understand how to use language:
- provide courteous responses to their efforts at polite speech
- patiently and correctly answer all of their questions
- opportunities to try to understand the meaning of longer and harder sentences
- verbally label objects for them to imitate
- provide much practice in naming objectives
Physical Development
To enhance small motor skills:
- provide opportunities to practice drinking with a filled cup
- provide paper and brightly colored crayons to use
- provide books that are colorful and attractive to them
- provide interesting objects to help their eye-hand coordination, and to give them quiet time
- many manipulative toys and experiences to practice new and refine existing motor skills
- opportunities to play with clay, playdough, large bead items to strings, etc.
To enhance large motor skills:
- to provide opportunities to practice walking, dancing, marching, running, develop casting and overhand throwing, for pounding
- find and explore things in the environment, kick and throw balls, climb up and down stairs and other obstacles
