Toddlers

Every toddler is an active learner. With his new found ability to walk around, he's in a whole new relationship with the world and can explore new territory like an old world adventurer. Through his/her falls, his/her bumps, as well as his/hers triumphs and discoveries, he's/she's learning about how the world works and also about how his/her own emerging self can help it work even better.

Provide him/her with lots of concrete learning materials, things he/she can pick up, roll, punch, stack, squeeze, bounce, pound, push, pull and in other ways, interact with. They don't need to be brightly colored fancy educational toys. Some of the simplest household items will delight a toddler; for him, the whole world is brand new.

While much of his/her behavior may seem haphazard to you, there's actually a lot of intelligence going on in even the simplest of acts. When your toddler picks up an object, he's/she's forming new associations to it and creating his/her first ideas about how the object relates to previous things he's/she's picked up. These new discoveries become part of his/her inquiring mind and fuel his/her drive toward mastery and accomplishment.