Infants and Toddlers: Learning through Daily Activities

From birth, your child has been exploring the world--taking in sights and sounds and textures, sorting them out, and making discoveries about how things work. Even very young children are capable learners. Just as you do at home, high quality child care programs build on this natural curiosity about the world. They carefully set up the environment so that your child will find interesting things to explore and will learn from everyday activities.

Here are some of the experiences you can expect your child to have in child care.

Playing with Toys

Toys are natural teachers. Children learn new skills while they have fun.

The program should have a selection of toys appropriate for the ages and interests of the children.

Dabbling in Art

Using art materials to express ideas and emotions gives children another language for communicating. For very young children, art activities are sensory experiences. When you visit your child's program, you may see your child:

• Exploring textures such as bumpy corduroy and silky satin
• Observing colors from the sunlight streaming through a prism
• Squeezing and rolling playdough
• Making crayon marks on a paper
• Painting with water on the sidewalk

While your child is an infant and toddler, you probably won't see many art products coming home. But these early sensory motor experiences lay the foundation for a lifetime of creative expression.

Imitating and Pretending

Pretend play builds imagination, promotes social skills, and is one of the ways your child gains a better understanding of daily experiences. Imitation is the beginning of pretend play. You may have seen your child

• Crawl on all fours and pretend to be an animal
• Pick up a toy telephone and carry on a conversation
• Hold and feed a doll
• Push a block along the floor and make a train sound
• Roll playdough into a ball and say "Apple"

Children should be encouraged to imitate and pretend. Sometimes caregivers will participate in their play, taking on a pretend role themselves. They also provide props that inspire pretending: stuffed animals, dolls, baby carriages, play telephones, pots and pans, dishes, some hats, and dress-up clothes.

Enjoying Stories and Books

The warm feelings your child experiences when you cuddle together and read a book or tell a story can lead to a lifelong love for reading. Research shows that children who have been read to often and from an early age enter school with more advanced language and better listening skills than those who have not had these experiences. The time you spend sharing books and telling stories at home with your child is time well spent.

Your child's caregivers should read books with your child every day. When you visit the program, you should look for sturdy washable books for infants so you don't have to worry if they mouth and bend them. Young children enjoy stories about familiar objects and experiences, with lots of repetition, rhyming verses, and simple plots. And toddlers especially like predictable stories so they can anticipate what will happen next! Children love homemade books--ones filled with photos of people they love. You might like to make one with your child and bring it to child care.

Tasting and Preparing Food

Food nourishes the body and the mind. At home, when you allow your child time to mash, smear, and squish food around, you encourage rich sensory experiences. Inviting your toddler to help prepare meals with you is a wonderful way to promote thinking, social, and fine motor skills all at the same time. And your child will experience a sense of pride in being able to help you with grown-up tasks.

At child care, your child should have tasting and food preparation experiences such at these:

• Stirring cinnamon in apple sauce
• Dipping banana chunks into yogurt
• Spreading jelly on crackers
• Shaking grated cheese onto macaroni
• Squeezing lemons to make lemonade
• Punching dough to make bread

Exploring Sand and Water

Water play is a natural part of everyday life. In child care, it becomes a special activity when props such as rubber animals, balls, boats, funnels, bottles, and cups are added to a small amount of water in a tub.

Child care programs should not offer sand play until children are almost two and are less likely to put the sand in their mouths. Sand play leads to discoveries (such as what happens when water is added to sand), develops fine motor skills (pouring sand into a pail), and promotes pretending (creating a sand castle).

Having Fun with Music and Movement

Music and movement experiences take place every day in child care--listening to different kinds of music, moving to music, singing songs, and creating music with simple instruments. These experiences are enjoyable and teach important skills. Here are some examples.

Research suggests that listening to and creating music help wire parts of the brain in ways that can help children understand math and science concepts.

Going Outdoors

Time outdoors is important for everyone's health and well-being. Some of the experiences your child will have outdoors include:

• Crawling, rolling, swinging
• Climbing, jumping, sliding, throwing, running
• Collecting pinecones, leaves, sticks, and acorns
• Feeling the grass
• Watching ants move along the sidewalk and squirrels scurry up trees
• Scooting along on wheel toys
• Going on neighborhood walks

The program's outdoor play area should invite your child to stretch and strengthen large muscles, breathe fresh air, and take in the sunshine and natural world. The schedule should show that children spend part of every day outdoors.