The Busy Bees Room
Toddlers Learning and Development
As children become mobile new opportunities for exploration and exercise open up. A safe and interesting environment, with age-appropriate resources, helps children to develop curiosity, coordination and physical abilities. This is a time when children can start to learn the beginnings of self-control and how to relate to other people. In this period, children can be encouraged to develop their social and mental skills by people to whom they have a positive attachment.
Building on their communication skills, children now begin to develop a sense of self and are more able to express their needs and feelings. Alongside non-verbal communication children learn a few simple words for everyday things and people. With encouragement and plenty of interaction with carers, children's communication skills grow and their vocabulary expands very rapidly during this period.
Exploration and simple self-help builds a sense of self-confidence. Children are also learning about boundaries and how to handle frustration. Play with toys that come apart and fit together encourages problem solving and simple planning. Pretend play helps children to learn about a range of possibilities. Adults are an important source of security and comfort.
Little Footprints Learning Environment
The room and outdoor environment for the Busy Bees room provides a safe, secure yet challenging space for the children.
The activities and resources in this age group include the following themes:
- Large Movement Area to encourage posture and large movements.
- Small Movement Play to encourage vision and fine movements.
- Imaginative Play to encourage speech, social and listening skills by the use of dolls, teddies and simple every day objects.
- Messy Play to encourage fine motor exploration of objects using all the senses.
- Sensory and Heuristic Play to encourage all aspects of sensory development, exploring objects, developing attention and concentration, hand-eye co-ordination and making simple preferences and choices.
- Book area to encourage an early love of books sharing them with a caring adult.
- Sand and Water Play to encourage exploration of objects using a child-focused approach.
