As the Fall and new school year are approaching, I have been thinking a lot about what I want to say on the topic of teaching your toddler at home. Over the last year and a half, starting when Little Miss Toddler was a little over a year and a half, I started setting up daily “after nap” activities for her that we can play and learn together doing. This has since evolved into more structured activities throughout the day. Due to the current health situation, my family and I have chosen to keep our daughter home this school year and homeschool her for preschool. As we begin this new chapter, I am excited to share what we do daily, the things we learn together, and how we have gotten to this point.
I never want anyone to feel like they have to do learning activities at home with their children but I am so passionate about finding fun and engaging ways to to teach our little learners that it has naturally come about. I believe in purposeful play and creating learning opportunities in a playful and casual way.
Creating these learning opportunities or playful invitations shouldn’t be stressful and if it is, I’m here to help! I wanted to share these 3 tips that I have learned as we have started incorporating more toddler activities into our day. I hope that these things I have learned along with Little Miss through trial and error help you feel more comfortable teaching your toddler at home!
3 Tips For Teaching Your Toddler At Home:
1. Follow Their Lead
Following your child’s lead is everything. Finding the topics and activities that they love makes learning at home much more enjoyable. Follow your child’s interest to help create learning opportunities around their likes. If you find that your child is more engaged in sensory activities, then find more opportunities to learn through play doing sensory activities together!
2. Keep It Playful
A child’s job is to PLAY! These learning activities are meant to be invitations to invite your child to play in a deeper way. Early childhood education is all about helping children develop their social, emotional, cognitive, and physical skills and these playful invitations help do just that. If your child isn’t interested in doing an activity that you set out or gets frustrated easily, do not worry about putting it away and trying it again later. I also encourage you to try and set the activity up in a different way to see if that interests them more.3. Create a Predictable Routine
Creating a predictable routine and following through with it helps your toddler at home more than you realize. We started learning activities as a way to transition after nap. Little Miss started to recognize that when she woke up, there would be an activity waiting for her and it helped with the transition after nap and the odd time between nap and dinner. Outside of learning activities, a predictable routine for toddlers is essential for them to keep consistency and set them up for success. Toddlers don’t necessarily need a set schedule but have a predictability to their daily routine helps them know what to expect and can help them handle their big emotions if they know what to expect.
A child’s job is to PLAY! These learning activities are meant to be invitations to invite your child to play in a deeper way. Early childhood education is all about helping children develop their social, emotional, cognitive, and physical skills and these playful invitations help do just that. If your child isn’t interested in doing an activity that you set out or gets frustrated easily, do not worry about putting it away and trying it again later. I also encourage you to try and set the activity up in a different way to see if that interests them more.3. Create a Predictable Routine
Creating a predictable routine and following through with it helps your toddler at home more than you realize. We started learning activities as a way to transition after nap. Little Miss started to recognize that when she woke up, there would be an activity waiting for her and it helped with the transition after nap and the odd time between nap and dinner. Outside of learning activities, a predictable routine for toddlers is essential for them to keep consistency and set them up for success. Toddlers don’t necessarily need a set schedule but have a predictability to their daily routine helps them know what to expect and can help them handle their big emotions if they know what to expect.
I hope you find these 3 tips helpful when trying to incorporate more hands-on learning activities in your home. Don’t ever feel like in order to start doing more learning activities with your toddler that you also need to go out and buy all of the things at once. Use what you already have in your house to enjoy the time together. These learning activities are a great way to bond and fill your toddler’s emotional cup.
Before the beginning of each month, I send out toddler activity guides to help insure you to create different activities surrounding set themes for the month. Each guide has over 25 activities for you to use with your toddler to learn and play together. The guide has math, literacy, social/emotional, and sensory activities from other creators as well as from my companion activity packet.
If you would like more simple to prep and standards based activities for your 2&3 year olds to do at home with you, then I have you covered! In my August Learn and Play Activity Packet I have created 15 learning activities for your toddlers to use at home. These activities cover math, literacy, sensory ideas, science, and social studies activities. I hope you love learning and playing with your toddlers all month long.
These 15 activities to be used with your toddlers throughout the month of August, can be found in my Teachers Pay Teachers store here!
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