Curriculum Summary
Our goal in this age group is to provide a safe and nurturing environment where children are active in the learning process.
During the young toddler years, all children depend on responsive, secure relationships to develop and learn. A high quality program such as ours offers young toddlers primary relationships in small groups. We provide personalized care that reflects consideration for individual differences among children.
Young toddlers are a wonderful age group thriving on exploration and creativity. They use their imagination and curiosity in all that they do. Working with this age involves observing toddlers at play, expanding play opportunities and allowing them the freedom to explore. This combined with adult support helps the child develop self-confidence, independence and greater language skills. Toddlers will spend a good part of the beginning of the school year learning separation from parents to being part of a group setting.
The young toddler curriculum is full of themes and goals with the individual child in mind. Our daily plan allows many opportunities for your young toddler to make free choices with the security of a caring adult by their side. Music and creative movement classes, and an age appropriate Bible story will be presented on a weekly basis. Our teachers act as facilitators and offer valid and exciting experiences that allow each toddler to learn something new every day.
Young Toddler Curriculum
The thematic units in this curriculum include a variety of activities for each day:
- Playing with Toys
- Dabbling in Art
- Imitating and Pretending
- Enjoying Stories and Books
- Tasting and Preparing Food
- Exploring Sand and Water
- Having Fun with Music and Movement
- Going Outdoors
September
- Nursery Rhyme: “Humpty Dumpty”
- Theme: apples
- Color: red
October
- Nursery Rhymes: “Jack Be Nimble”
- Theme: pumpkins
- Color: orange
November
- Nursery Rhyme: “Hickory, Dickory Dock”
- Themes: Turkeys, Thanksgiving
- Color: brown
December
- Nursery Rhyme: “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”
- Theme: Christmas
- Color: green
January
- Nursery Rhyme: “Three Little Kittens”
- Themes: birds, snow, mittens
- Color: blue
February
- Nursery Rhyme: “Jack and Jill”
- Theme: hearts
- Color: pink
March
- Nursery Rhyme: “Old King Cole”
- Themes: shamrocks, circus
- Color: yellow
April
- Nursery Rhyme: “Mary, Mary Quite Contrary”
- Themes: spring, rain, Easter
- Color: purple
May
- Nursery Rhyme: Review all Nursery Rhymes
- Themes: Mother’s Day, flowers,
- Color: black
June
- Themes: bugs; Father’s Day
- Color: review all colors
Goals And Objectives
Children learn at their own pace, though most move through similar developmental stages. Even in groups of children close in age, you will find a lot of variation in children’s capabilities and interests. Our Toddler program supports effective teaching practices and opportunities for discovery and learning through the following skill domains:
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
- Interactions with Adults: The developing ability to respond to and engage with adults
- Relationships with Adults: The development of close relationships with certain adults who provide consistent nurturance
- Interactions with Peers: The developing ability to respond to and engage with other children
- Relationships with Peers: The development of relationships with certain peers through interactions over time
- Identity of Self in Relation to Others: The developing concept that the child is an individual operating within social relationships
- Recognition of Ability: The developing understanding that the child can take action to influence the environment
- Expression of Emotion: The developing ability to express a variety of feelings through facial expressions, movements, gestures, sounds, or words
- Empathy: The developing ability to share in the emotional experiences of others
- Emotional Regulation: The developing ability to manage emotional responses with assistance from others and independently
- Impulse Control: The developing capacity to wait for needs to be met, to inhibit potentially hurtful behavior, and to act accordingly to social expectations, including safety rules
- Social Understanding: The developing understanding of the responses, communication, emotional expressions, and actions of other people
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
- Receptive Language: The developing ability to understand words and increasingly complex utterances
- Expressive Language: The developing ability to produce the sounds of language and use vocabulary and increasingly complex utterances
- Communication Skills and Knowledge: The developing ability to communicate nonverbally and verbally
- Interest in Print: The developing interest in engaging with print in books and in the environment
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
- Cause-and-Effect: The developing understanding that one event brings about another
- Spatial Relationships: The developing understanding of how things move and fit in space
- Problem Solving: The developing ability to engage in purposeful effort to reach a goal or figure out how something works
- Imitation: The developing ability to mirror, repeat, and practice the actions of others, either immediately or later
- Memory: The developing ability to store and later retrieve information about past experiences
- Number Sense: The developing understanding of number and quantity
- Classification: The developing ability to group, sort, categorize, connect, and have expectations of objects and people according to their attributes
- Attention Maintenance: The developing ability to attend to people and things while interacting with others and exploring the environment and play materials
- Understanding of Personal Care Routines: The developing ability to understand and participate in personal care routines
PERCEPTUAL AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
- Perceptual Development: The developing ability to become aware of the social and physical environment through the senses
- Gross Motor: The developing ability to move the large muscles
- Fine Motor: The developing ability to move the small muscles