Your child is between the2.5 to 4 years

Children can really get lost in their imagination, which is good for their creative expression. We use dance ribbons and other items to support them in this process. By spending a lot of time dancing, children get to know their bodies and develop their gross motor skills. It’s also a really good way to burn off energy!

The children love to paint and can mix their own paints, making them discover new colors. We play with beads in different colors, shapes, and sizes. This involves counting, sorting, and threading (which helps improve their hand-eye coordination and stimulates their sense of order and precision).

There are few things toddlers love more than balancing, rolling, and jumping, supervised by a member of our childcare staff. Our toddlers get to discover a lot of different forms of exercise, sometimes using small items such as hoops, balls, or bags of seeds.

Children are enthusiastic explorers. We encourage this by offering climbing and clambering equipment that is at their own height, and therefore accessible. Children are willing to try new things, but they’re less likely to do something on their own that is genuinely too hard for them, and therefore dangerous. Because our groups are made up of children around the same age, they also don’t have an older, more daring child to lead the way. Climbing and clambering equipment is very important for the development of motor skills and self-confidence. Being introduced to this at a young age is helpful to the children when they are older. Climbing and clambering teaches you to assess distances and risks.

It’s vital to focus a lot of attention on your toddler’s social development. Toddlers want to belong, be part of a group, and they look up to their friends. Our childcare staff guide the children in learning how to handle empathy, compassion, and social awareness. They often also need to learn to manage their feelings and their own will. Children learn that it’s fine to have feelings and that there’s room for these feelings, and they learn to express them.

We teach the children that they’re all equally important to us, as well as to listen to each other and talk in groups. We support this through the various projects we organize, including a morning exercise class, kids’ yoga, the Logeerbeer (‘Sleepover Bear’, a teddy bear children take home with them and for which they take turns caring), the cupboard in which we keep the utensils we use to set the table, and (at some branches) Early Bird English classes. “Our” children are full of confidence by the time they start elementary school!

Children learn social rules while playing; they can accept simple rules and await their turn. In role-playing games, for example, we teach children to process feelings and impressions. Popular attributes include costumes, stuffed animals, dolls, and tea sets. The “living room” corner is one of the kids’ favorites, along with picnicking on a rug. The children also like to build a train track or create amazing buildings together.

We spend a lot of time talking to the children. This helps to further build their vocabulary, which is already expanding enormously at this point. Good articulation and using clear sentences is important here. We articulate clearly what we or the children will be doing. We read to the children and tell them stories. And, very importantly, we listen carefully whenever a toddler wants to say something.

We talk to the children in a mature way. Specifically, we don’t use childish language or diminutives, and we use normal intonation. Children are inclined to behave in accordance with how they are treated, and ultimately, we want them to develop an adult way of speaking and understanding. Teaching them childish language is therefore not helpful to them.

Between the ages of 2.5 and 4, children’s language development is in sync with their social and emotional, motor, cognitive/sensory, and personal development. This “parallel development,” as it is known, where all these different areas develop at the same pace, is not quite as pronounced when children grow older. We undertake activities that stimulate all areas of development, including puppet shows or playing with finger puppets or hand puppets.

We invite children to use language. We offer activities that combine thinking, talking, listening, fantasizing, and playing to maximize their development at this stage. We read to them, play language games, repeat rhymes, and sing with the children. We sometimes use a song basket, thinking of a song to sing for each object in the basket.

Imitation and imagination go hand in hand: making food in the play kitchen, changing the dolls’ diapers, and drinking tea together at the table. The costume box, iron, and household equipment and appliances are always popular among older toddlers. The eldest ones want to help with everything; collecting leaves in the garden, doing the dishes, polishing shoes, and cleaning windows. They love doing the same things we adults do all day, so providing them with materials from everyday life is always a great success.

We involve the children as much as possible in the decision-making process and setting group rules. This enables them to have more control and, as the rules feel like their “own,” they’re more likely to stick to them. It also increases their understanding of cause and effect. For instance, they might discover there’s almost no sand left in the sand table after other children have been playing. They decide together that after playing with the sand table, they must use a dustpan and brush to collect any sand that fell next to the table and pour it back into the table.

Another great example is our clothes peg game, which involves a huge container filled with different colored clothes pegs of different sizes. The most fun and educational part is allowing the children to discover what they can do with them. We don’t start with games immediately, as the children are still too fascinated by the new play equipment and will have a hard time paying attention. They’ll feel them, squeeze them, and take them apart. Children also have a need to organize things in this phase (by arranging all clothes pegs of the same color next to each other), create series (arrange them in a certain sequence), and match things (search for two clothes pegs of the same color).

Your toddler has trouble telling fantasy from reality: everything is possible, just like in fairytales. So imagination can be great fun, but a little scary too. We take children’s fears seriously, so if they tell us there’s a dragon hiding under the bed, we deal with the scary situation by chasing it away. And we also tell them that dragons only exist in books (in the hope that the children will come up with their own solution next time). We don’t pander too much to their fantasies, though, as it’s better to alleviate their fear than amplify it by focusing on it too much.

Doing yoga poses will give your child a nice balance between activity and relaxation. Yoga stimulates their motor skills and improves their ability to focus, but above all it improves self-awareness. It makes children aware of their bodies, allowing them to discover them and engage with them in a creative way.

We give toddlers the opportunity they need to do as many things on their own as possible; this accommodates children’s need to be in charge and do things with a purpose. At this stage, children find it fairly easy to take off different clothing items, so imagine how satisfying it is for them eventually to be able to put on several items of clothing at the same time. They develop greater self-confidence if they learn they don’t have to rely on adults for everything they do!