Tumbleweeds
These young toddler years are full of explosive growth and it is such a joy to be a witness and guide in the lives of our students during this time. We teachers even find ourselves learning and growing right alongside them!
Language Skills
Each week has a new theme or topic to explore, so children always have something new to anticipate and look forward to.
Problem Solving
Talking about something else that goes on in Tumbleweeds, and let’s all agree that there is a LOT
Social Skills
Toddlers are exploring every aspect of the world around them! We focus on tactile activities that keep minds and bodies engaged.
Language skills begin to blossom
As a toddler’s receptive language develops, they begin to understand some questions and follow simple directions. They also typically gain about 50 words in their expressive vocabularies over the next year and begin to experiment with stringing these words together in two-word phrases. We promote this rapid language development by providing an environment rich with literacy through endless read-alouds, songs, and finger plays. Repetition of favorite songs and stories, as well as being familiar with what comes next in a well-known story, builds the confidence needed to try a new word. As a team, we work to keep up a constant dialogue between us and our students in order to provide them with exposure to content-rich language and a model of positive conversation traits. We also employ the use of sign language as another way to communicate with our toddlers, and encourage them to use sign as it gives them the ability to communicate their needs when unable to speak them. Some of the basic signs we focus on with our students include: please, thank you, more, water, milk, drink, eat, no, and so many more.
Social Skills Develop
Learning to become a friend is one thing that separates a toddler from an infant. Turn taking, sharing, parallel play, and even one-on-one play with a peer are some of the many aspects we work on in our classroom. We work to promote a safe sense of community within our environment through large and small group times. We also focus on equipping students with the skills to appropriately communicate when they need space and showing the other toddlers how to respect that request.
Identifying various emotions is another key area of social intelligence and we foster this by building/creating bonds between students and teachers and connections with peers. We believe that when a child is comfortable in an environment where they feel accepted and cared for by their adults, they will thrive and be ready to spread their wings and fly.
“I can do it!”
We love teaching these children that they can do it and we believe in them. Moving from a sippy cup to a "big kid cup” or taking a short walk down the sidewalk are still big hurdles for these toddlers, and we are here to help them through the process. Though they are so very young, we know that if a child is given the opportunity to do more than what is expected of their abilities they will rise to the challenge. Stepping back and allowing them the opportunity to figure it out can truly be an amazing thing to watch and they often surprise us with their unique problem-solving capabilities!
