A toddler naturally has guidance needs. Teachers at a playgroup are expert enough to meet these guidance needs. If you are following a SPW childcare course, you can learn more about meeting the guidance needs of toddlers through this article.
Cognitive development
Language, perception, attention, memory, ability to imagine objects and experiences. Toddlers are of course in the process of expanding their vocabulary and learning about grammatical sentence structure. Of course, they cannot yet build this logically at this age, but they do absorb how others use it.
Reading in the doll corner
Because this is the age in which children can expand their vocabulary and work on their language and speech development, reading aloud is an important development opportunity that you as a teacher cannot miss. It is best to read aloud in an interactive way .
Interactive reading:
Research shows that when interactive reading is done at home, it is more focused on what children already know and that it is not yet focused enough on unknown words and concepts. The mutual communication during this method of reading is more important than the story itself. While reading aloud, you point out the important aspects of the story, you make sounds and make connections between the child’s world of experience. This way you give the child space to respond, and this is a great incentive. In practice, it appears that children like to respond: by pointing, imitating sounds, completing sentences and answering questions. As a child progresses in age, the storyline becomes more important.
The results of interactive reading:
In practice you notice that children love the attention, they blossom, gain more self-confidence and feel freer to talk. It is a fun challenge to involve those children who are less well developed in interactive reading.
Circle
Sitting together in a circle is great for talking about a topic, about spring or farm animals for example. There are plenty of topics. A game in the circle is also good for cognitive development : for example, you can place pictures in the circle, and the children also get a picture in their hand. They take turns placing the picture on the corresponding picture in the circle. They learn to focus their attention on something, exercise their memory, think for themselves.
You ask questions and rhymes are also suitable. For example, verses about the different parts of the body (this is me, this is you: the nose, eyes, hair, etc. are discussed). Toddlers love naming their physical features. Or you sing a song that requires the toddlers to move (stamping their feet, waving their hands, for example). You can ask many questions about this: for example, ,we are now waving our hands, what else can we do with our hands?,
Doll corner
When a few children are playing in the doll corner, it is nice to be there as a leader. You can really add value to their puppetry. You can ask for coffee or a sandwich. And so you talk about this and ask questions such as: what do you want, what do you like, what do you always put on your bread in the morning. You deliberately use words that you know most children do not know yet, such as: breakfast. You shouldn’t ask them all the details, but the idea is to do it in a fun, relaxed way, with a joke here and there, and in a playful manner. Every now and then you can add a verse or a song to make it even more fun. Besides drinking coffee and having breakfast together, you can take care of the dolls together or play caper. You will notice that when the children play alone again, they use certain words in their play that you just used. And that they imitate what you just did.
Game table
Also an excellent opportunity to talk with the children in a relaxed manner about what they are doing. This talk is purposeful: it is about the shapes and colors they are working with. You can play memory together with a few children. Naming pictures, asking questions and letting the children name them make an important contribution to their development.