The Top Learning And Development Questions To Ask Before Your Toddler Starts Daycare
Posted on: 24 March 2020
What will your toddler learn during their daycare day? If your one- or two-year-old is new to toddler child care services, take a look at the learning and development questions you should ask right now.
What Content Areas Does Your Curriculum Include?
While different toddler child care centers vary in overall curricula, most should include basic age and developmentally appropriate learning opportunities. The curriculum will cover a variety of content areas. The most common early childhood education areas for toddlers include:
- Literacy. Early literacy in a toddler classroom may include storytime, book handling, pre-writing (such as scribbling), and other similar activities
- Math. Even though your toddler isn't ready to add or subtract, they may learn about number recognition, counting, and basic shapes
- Science. While biochemistry can wait until high school, toddlers can still explore and experiment with basic physics concepts, nature, chemistry, and more
- The arts. Your toddler should engage in visual arts such as painting and drawing as well as performing arts (music, drama, and movement/dance)
- Social studies. At the toddler level, social studies content typically includes concepts such as community helpers and cultures around the world
Along with traditional academic areas and the arts, your child will also build other types of skills during the daycare. Read on for more information on personal, social, and emotional development in the early childhood classroom.
What Personal Skills Will Toddlers Build?
The toddler years are a time of rapid development. Your curious child is building skills right now that they'll use for years to come. In the toddler child care classroom, personal skill-building may include:
- Self-care. Your child's teacher will still help them to eat, use the facilities, dress themselves, and engage in other self-care essential activities. But the teacher should also encourage them to build these skills for themselves
- Self-regulation. Your toddler isn't a master of their own emotions—yet. Daycare should help your toddler to learn about their emotions and control them in social situations
- Interpersonal skills. Toddlers typically engage in parallel or solitary play. This means they don't play directly with their peers. But as the school year moves on, they'll start to build interpersonal social skills and learn about concepts such as sharing and turn-taking
Beyond the content area and skills your child will build in child care, talk to the center's staff about the methods used in the classroom. A high-quality program individualizes instruction for the student, uses hands-on methods, and provides plenty of teacher training in well-researched educational strategies. For more information, reach out to a daycare near you like Lighthouse Academy.
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