Playing (birth - 33 months)

Toddlers learn by playing—with objects and materials, with adults and peers, with their bodies and imaginations, and with sounds and words. Lots of important learning happens for children through play, for example:

• They test out strategies and ideas.
• They figure out what happens when they do something and what changes when they do it just a bit differently.
• They discover cause-and-effect relationships.
• They invent new activities, new ways of doing things, new games, and new words.

Toddlers need to test their emerging motor skills in active play. They need interesting places to explore, but with enough routine and familiarity to support their independence. They also need spaces for quiet focus time, with attractive, well-organized materials that suggest play directions without scripting the play.

Educators need to be flexible and have the ability to shift gears or reorganize play spaces to support toddlers’ developmental leaps. For example, as toddlers’ social skills increase, you will want to support their cooperative play or as their language takes off, you will help extend it further by guiding their conversations, joining them in fantasy play, or helping them pretend together.