Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Limitless Learning

Almost every activity in your day can be used as an opportuninty for learning.

Academic teaching of ABC's, 123's, seasons, nursery rhymes, weather, colours, shapes, animals, etc, etc can be taught directly, as you talk to your toddler or concretely through play.

Nature walks are a wonderful way to slow down and enjoy your toddler. I would walk around the block with them, with no agenda in mind. We would stop and examine the flowers, the bugs on the ground, the cars going past, the animals in the yards and just chat about each one.

Virtue teaching can be part of each activity too. Model manners at meal times, sing cheerfulness songs at bath time, talk about being a busy helper during chores time, role play kindness with dolls or trucks during play time and so on.

Being a toddler teacher is an all day, every day job with awesome, long-lasting rewards!!

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Toy Tidiness

Have a system for your toys.

We had ten litre, blue and red, rectangular tubs for most of the toys.
This made starting play time super quick as I could just grab one tub and knew they could play.
It made pack up wonderfully easy too, as right from the start we would pack up one tub before we pulled out the next one. So I never ended the day with a mountain of toys to sort and put away.
We had a tub each for Duplo, trains, cars, wooden blocks, dolls, tea set, animals, instruments, craft, puzzles, card games, and a 'bits' box filled with odds and ends toys that were not a set.
If the 'bits' tub was getting too full, then it was time to have a quick sort through and start a bag of toys to pop into a charity bin, to share with others.

Pieces were rarely lost or broken, and dad came home to a clean house too - mostly!!