Program Details
- Ages: 18 months to 3 years
- Toddler-Teacher Ratio: 5:1
- Schedule: Monday-Friday 8:45am -11:45am
- Day House (Before & After Care): 7:30am -8:30am, 11:45am-5:30pm
The learning environments of our Toddler Community classrooms conform to the physical needs of the children, both in the size of the furnishings and the opportunities for motor development. The learning materials, visual tools, furniture, and classroom arrangement are designed to challenge development of coordination in movement and in thought.
Curriculum
Practical Life
- Materials necessary for preparing and serving snacks, setting and clearing the table, sweeping, caring for plants and animals, dish washing, polishing, hand washing, window cleaning, flower arranging, buttoning, zipping, etc.
Language Development
- Miniature objects, nomenclature cards, books, spoken vocabulary enrichment exercises, and other activities including art and music.
- Toddler-age children have a special sensitivity for learning the language they hear spoken around them. Our teachers are careful to use accurate, understandable, positive language in the classroom. The Toddler classroom offers many creative and intriguing linguistic concepts to expand their growing vocabularies. By participating in conversations, listening to stories, classifying objects and learning songs and poems, they nurture their budding language skills. Our skilled teachers show your child how to use words to identify the feelings they experience in themselves and see in others. In this way, we are able to help advance their social skills.
Independence & Manners
- Many of the activities the Toddler children engage in are especially designed to build self-help skills that lead to independence. For example, we gently and respectfully guide your child to hang up her/his own jacket or apron and to problem-solve rather than say, “I can’t”. Because children at this age have a strong tendency to imitate what they see, the teachers consistently model appropriate social skills, manners, and consideration for others.
Freedom, Movement, & Choice
- Materials for hand-eye coordination such as: threading, bead stringing, cubes on pegs, spheres on horizontal pegs, puzzles, gluing, folding, and various practical exercises.
- Toddlers participate in song and dance and have access to a variety of large muscle activities that offer them opportunities to jump, climb, balance, crawl, and choose how to move about. These exercises and creative art activities are offered for each child to select. We encourage and guide children to develop their ability to make choices. The carefully prepared Toddler environment supports freedom of movement and choice while maintaining order and safety.
Caring for Self & Environment
- An important cornerstone of the Toddler environment are the Practical Life exercises. These exercises help young children to develop physical coordination and the ability to care for themselves and their environment. Toddlers are shown how to wash dishes, pour water, care for plants, clean windows, and to handle buttons, bows, and zippers, etc.
- These tasks are broken down by the teacher into a series of separate, manageable steps. By learning just one step at a time, a child is easily able to master new skills, giving him or her a great sense of personal achievement and pride. Toddlers gain independence in their toileting abilities. When a toddler is ready to progress into the Children’s House, they will be self-sufficient in their use of the bathroom, through gentle guidance and support of the Directresses.