Your child is between the18 months to 2.5 years

Indoors and outdoors, we offer children all the room they need to move around. Children can already do so much at this age! Some of the toys we use to stimulate fine motor skills include wooden blocks and DUPLO®. This also introduces children to the concept of gravity by letting them build tall towers and then watching them collapse.

Beanbags, small and low climbing equipment, balancing bars, stepping stones. These are all safe materials and equipment children can climb on, roll off, and play with unsupervised. This allows them to practice their balance and coordination.

We offer activities that develop independence. We make them put on their own socks and, if they’re ready, their shoes. Putting on and taking off your own coat is an achievement, as is eating your food yourself without assistance, and washing your face and your hands on your own. These are all good exercises for toddlers to improve their fine and gross motor skills, while they also learn about different items of clothing, body parts, and various new concepts. This helps children to grow in self-confidence.

Children have – and burn off – loads of energy at this time. Since they’re also unable to get themselves to slow down, we make sure there’s plenty of opportunity for rest and relaxation: cuddle time, reading stories, and singing songs together. Reading to children is enjoyable and educational and stimulates their imagination, as well as being a time of rest and personal attention.

Although most children still play alone or alongside each other at this stage, they also start playing together more often, which is something we encourage. We also remind individual children of the importance of sharing toys, although children under the age of two still tend to take each others’ toys away rather than sharing them. For example, we might pass the ball to each other while at the same time calling out the children’s names. This is how we create a sense of togetherness and encourage children to have fun together.

Backed by their professional training and through observation, our childcare staff can observe children in a neutral and respectful manner and can interpret their behavior correctly. Children who take other children’s toys tend to do so not to tease or bully the other child, but rather to train their independence. They are too young to grasp that their behavior is not desirable and not nice from the point of view of the child whose things they have taken away. Up to the age of 5-6, children are very self-focused: they simply cannot yet put themselves in another person’s shoes.

We try to articulate as much as we can for toddlers, which helps them to build their vocabulary. We don’t just communicate a lot with the children; we also read to them, ask them questions, and explain things, which promotes speech development. Young children do not yet have the patience to listen to a full story, but they love reading short stories or looking at pictures together.

Up to the age of around 18 months, toddlers already have a vocabulary of around 50 words, and then go on to learn around 10 new ones a day! After a while, they start combining these words to form simple, basic sentences. We speak very slowly and clearly to ensure that children use the correct sentence structure; we use short sentences and repeat a lot of what we say. We tell children what we see around us or what we’re going to do. We and the children finish sentences together, without making any corrections or improvements. This will make them feel challenged the next time, as opposed to self-conscious.

All children love creating a “living” story - success guaranteed! One thing we do is describe pictures and items found in a book; we might choose a picture of a clothesline with a pair of trousers, socks, and a sweater. We hand everyone a pair of socks, and if they’re bunched up they can throw them in the air like a little ball and catch them. They can then fold the socks out again and wave them around. This is how we visualize language for children in a playful way.

Fun and educational: we offer children toys where different shapes (circles, squares, and triangles) must be fit into the corresponding slot. This gives them an understanding of different-sized objects and learn to identify different shapes. It also improves their spatial awareness, as does playing with blocks.

At Kindergarden, we mark the passing of the seasons and celebrate each new season, both indoors and outdoors, as this teaches children about the miracle of nature. We interpret “Caring for tomorrow” to mean caring for yourself, others, and the natural world around us. For example, we might collect rainwater in a rain barrel and then use this to water the plants during an extended dry spell.

Toddlers like to doodle and color with crayons and enjoy the rhythmic motion of their arms and what this looks like on paper. They also love to play with beads and clay. These various forms of expression help them develop their creative, sensory, and motor skills, as well as teaching them about different materials, colors, and shapes. At all our branches, we have the materials to turn these activities into a real joy for all the children.

Children this age see themselves as the center of everything, and rules create clarity, and by extension a sense of safety and security. This is very important during this stage of dependence and growing independence. They’re becoming better at understanding what you say and mean. We lay down a few basic rules: treating each other with respect, cleaning up our toys after we’re done playing with them, and handling things with care.

We like to give children compliments because this increases their self-confidence, although we never overdo it, as this may have the opposite effect, where children come to rely too much on positive affirmation. We teach the children that they should be proud of who they are and of their talents, abilities, and accomplishments. We describe the process and what feelings this evokes in the children. We describe what we observe and what impact this has on the child.