Focus on activities the children in your class want to learn. Toddlers between 12 and 18 months have short attention spans, so giving them more control over what they do will help keep them engaged. Toddler lesson plans should center around play and exploration, with the teacher providing them with enriching activities that stimulate learning. Have the toddler play with clay or paints. When touching the paint, ask the toddler what color the paint is and whether it feels wet. In a 2005 article on the North Dakota State University website, Sean Brotherson, Family Science Specialist, reports that art helps with toddler brain development.
With adult supervision, toddlers can explore the outdoors, as long as they are supervised. Good activities for toddlers include playing in the dirt, hunting for rocks, taking nature walks and picking fruits. Outdoor play allows toddlers to learn about nature early on.
Print out objects that help toddlers learn crucial concepts, such as color identification, shapes, letters and numbers, and tell the toddlers what these objects are. Ask them to locate the letter “R,” for example, and praise anyone who identifies the right object. Help toddlers develop early literacy skills by reading more books to them that are filled with information.
Have the toddlers play games that require repetitive tasks. For example, give them a bunch of cards and draw squares on a large piece of paper, with a different number in each square corresponding with a card. Have the toddlers place each card in the square corresponding to the card. Take the cards, shuffle them and hand them to another toddler, who must perform the same tasks. Play games like this repetitively, since repetition helps children master concepts.
Coloring pictures helps toddlers learn to identify shapes, such as shapes that represent animals. The process of coloring holds the toddler’s interest and the images will help the toddlers learn to identify these animals. Also, as the toddlers are coloring, look at how they hold their crayons and help them learn proper techniques, crucial for when they must develop handwriting skills later on.