I know, from personal experience, that writing a toddler lesson plan can be a daunting task so let me share with you a few tips that might help you begin the process using the word TODDLER as our guide…
For this post, a toddler is being defined as a child who is crawling or just beginning to walk and going on up through the age of two.
Before writing a toddler lesson plan, take the time to observe the toddler(s) in your care. While observing, take time to notice…
- Toddler interest
- Toddler vocabulary
- Toddler motor skills
- Toddler play
- Toddler interactions
- Toddler behavior
From your observations, you will begin to see trends in toddler development. The toddler’s stage of development should be the guide behind all planning.
To promote toddler development, the toddler must be an active participant in his or her own learning. Toddler growth and development begins to take shape as toddlers are doing something and interacting with others.
A safe but challenging, interesting, and inviting learning environment is a critical part of promoting toddler development. Toddlers need consistent freedom to explore the learning environment. The learning environment includes any place a toddler spends time – outdoors or indoors.
As a toddler is given the opportunity to explore the environment, a variety of tools and materials need to be present and available that provide lots of different kinds of experiences for toddler play and exploration.
As different experiences within the toddler’s learning environment are repeated, new developmental milestones are both introduced and mastered.
Putting it all together
So now that you have the TODDLER tidbits for what needs to be considered as you design your lesson plans, let me share with you how I would go about putting this all together using one of my own experiences…
As I observe my grandson, I notice that he has just started wearing shoes and is particularly interested in walking in those shoes.
I know that learning how to walk on a variety of surfaces with shoes on or off is a developmental milestone that my grandson needs to master so I want to give him opportunities to do a little walking by providing many types of walking experiences on different types of surfaces…
I can provide these walking experiences both in the indoor and outdoor learning environment though natural opportunities in play and exploration and the more we repeat the different types of walking experiences the sooner he will master the ability to walk on different types of surfaces whether he is wearing those brand new shoes or not! …
Forming it all up
Putting the toddler learning experience in a lesson plan form would look something like this…