The Roots of Early Learning

Offer Interesting Learning Opportunities

Before watching this video, read the text below. When instructed, watch the segment of video beginning at 4:05 and ending at 7:46.

To start the video in the middle, click the play arrow. Then move your cursor along the progress bar. Click the progress bar when you reach the time you'd like to start.

For babies and toddlers, everything is a learning opportunity. Unlike adults, young children don’t set out to master particular skills or learn a particular subject. They learn through play. Babies and toddlers are drawn to anything that is surprising or that offers them a chance to discover something new. They practice physical skills such as reaching, rolling over, and standing. They experiment with how to make things move, how to fit things together, how to find what they can no longer see, and how to use tools to reach their goals. As they connect with people, they learn to communicate with gestures, words, and eventually with sentences, questions, and stories.

Trusting relationships, a well-arranged environment, and a daily rhythm that is both flexible and comfortingly familiar enable babies and toddlers to play and learn with confidence. In a calm and orderly setting, they can pursue their own investigations without distracting interruptions. By offering learning opportunities that are stimulating (but not overwhelming), you can help babies and toddlers engage in the activities and interactions that shape their rapidly developing brains. 

• Support children’s investigations. Offer children interesting opportunities to explore and investigate. Put out just a few materials at a time to help children focus. Notice what children are trying to do and what holds their interest; then offer support and encouragement. When a child succeeds, share in his delight.
• Use language to expand learning. Talk with children about what they are doing. Give them words to go with their discoveries. Share books that introduce new words and concepts, expanding their horizons. With toddlers especially, use language to help them make connections between known and new experiences and between related events or ideas.

Watch the video segment. In this segment, you’ll see a focus on STEM and language learning. You’ll see how the educators offer children interesting materials to explore, interesting processes to investigate, and interesting problems to solve. The educators use language to connect with children, invite and encourage their exploration, share their triumphs, and expand their learning.

Begin at 4:02 as Kathy says, “Shake, shake” and watch to the end. As you watch, look for effective strategies used by the educators in the video and jot down answers to these viewing questions in your Learning Log.

• What do you notice about how the educators help children focus?​
• What do you notice about how the educators support children’s investigations and offer encouragement for their efforts and achievements?
• What do you notice about how the educators use language to expand children’s learning?

Review

How can you help babies and toddlers focus as they pursue interesting learning opportunities?

• You can:
  • Make sure that the overall environment is orderly and calm. Reduce background noise, clutter, and visual stimulation, which may be distracting.
  • Provide protected spaces where children can pursue investigations without too much interruption from others.
  • Minimize transitions so children have time to finish what they are doing. When a transition is necessary, give a few minutes’ notice so that a child is not taken by surprise when he needs to end an activity.
  • Arrange play materials in an organized way so that children know where to find them and can see and get what they want to use, without being overwhelmed by too many choices.
  • Offer only a few, well-chosen items at a time.
  • Offer just a bit of help when children seem to lose focus.
  • Talk about what you notice children doing.
  • Use a child’s name to get her attention and let her know that your talk is meant for her.

How can you support and encourage babies’ and toddlers’ investigations?

• You can:
  • Make a connection with a baby or young toddler by playing alongside, imitating what she does, and then doing something new that she can imitate.
  • Set up interesting problems for children to solve, such as getting an object that is out of reach or partly or fully hidden, getting things into and out of containers of various sorts, making things “go,” and fitting pieces together.
  • Show toddlers how you use tools to accomplish goals and let them use them in their own way.
  • Provide just enough help so that a child can have the thrill of solving a challenging problem.
  • Talk with children to encourage their efforts and suggest new possibilities. Share the joy of children’s discoveries and their pride in their accomplishments. Use specific words and an encouraging or appreciative tone. (“Wow! You made the ball go really fast down that steep ramp!”)

How can you use language to expand learning for babies and for toddlers?

• You can:
  • Use “I noticed” statements to talk with children about what they are doing.
  • Use “I wonder” statements to provoke children’s thinking.
  • Talk about the tools and materials children are exploring and the strategies they might use to try to solve problems they encounter.
  • Share songs and rhymes; make up songs about what children are doing or what they have learned.
  • Talk with children, back and forth, responding to what they say and giving them time to respond with words, sounds, or actions.
  • Share books with children in ways that engage their active participation. Talk about the pictures as well as the story. Encourage children to point to and name pictures, make sound effects, repeat words and phrases, and ask questions. Help them connect things in the book to their own experiences.  
  • Tell children stories and give them more information about things they show interest in.
  • Use specific, interesting words in conversations with older infants and toddlers, for example, delicious, daffodil, ramp, smaller, wood shavings, and collected.
  • Talk with toddlers about what they remember, plan to do, think may happen, or imagine.
  • Help older infants and toddlers to tell their own stories about something that happened. Listen intently. Use questions, prompts, and nonverbal responses to show interest and better understand what happened.
  • Ask toddlers questions that make them think or explain their thinking.
  • Use language to direct toddlers’ attention to something that is happening and to help them make connections between steps in a process.
  • Talk with a child in your native language (or in other languages you speak fluently), where you naturally use a lot of interesting words. Talk with a child in his home language too, if possible. Babies and toddlers can learn multiple languages and gain many benefits from doing so.
  • Talk with children all the time! The more language they hear and respond to, the stronger their language will grow.

What makes “I noticed” and “I wonder” statements good conversation starters?

• They are good conversation starters because:
  • “I noticed” statements help to make a connection. They reflect your focus on what the person you want to talk with is doing or on what you are looking at or doing together.
  • “I noticed” statements open the door to understanding the other person’s perspective. They help speakers avoid interpretations (that might be off base) and judgments (that might be argument starters or conversation enders).
  • “I wonder” statements invite two people to think and wonder together.

Reflect

Think about the infants and toddlers in your own program as you answer these reflection questions in your Learning Log.

• What learning opportunities do you offer that children find especially engaging?
• How do you help children focus, support their investigations, and use language to extend their learning?
• What did you learn that you will take back to your learning environment and put into practice?