Guided Activities 1-2 year Olds?

[playfelt]

It isn't a very popular opinion for sure. And too often we end up bowing to the pressure of parents who think if there is nothing for the fridge or no worksheet or something tangible to take home they didn't do anything. If you look at almost any of the teacher reasource books that say Early Childhood you will see that they are designed to be used with kids age 3-5. Yes we can dumb down the curriculum to appeal to the 18-24m but that doesn't mean that is the best thing. I explain to parents that what we do at the 1-3 age level is learn how to learn. It involves physical skills of learning muscle control and that takes lots of repetition of doing the same game over and over so they can feel better about their progress as in being able to stack 5 blocks this week instead of 3. There is mental learning in terms of memory, concepts like colours, how many. And awareness of their place in the world - how they fit in with the plants and animals around them. Yes we do short group times with fingerplays, songs, etc. I do not do calendar, weather, etc as a daily ritual. We stick with concrete things and we look out the window throughout the day and we discuss what we see. Our circletime is never more than 10 minutes long. Yes we read books a lot and there is a shelf of board books there all the time and used during transitions or waiting such as reading books while we take turns for potty/diapers.

It is the parents that we need to educate. To teach them that while kids are "just playing" they are learning. The key difference between playing at home and at daycare is that I have set up the play so that certain things can be learned.

I am also working on making more use of non-paper. Example using fabric/felt instead of cardboard so that it is toddlerproof. We have tried a few sessions at the CCPRN but it is really a hard sell to change the minds of caregivers who have been brainwashed to think that learning for toddlers has to be an adult led craft so they can take it home to prove to mom that the child didn't just sit in front of the tv all day.