Wordless books offer toddlers the chance to put words to the illustrations. The activity requires the kids to pay close attention to the details in the picture to figure out what is happening. The toddlers interpret those details and put the action into words to form a logical story. Wordless books give toddlers a chance to develop their language skills by connecting thoughts and understandings about the world into words. They also work on developing story structure and logical sequences. If you don't have any wordless picture books in your collection, any picture book works particularly if the kids aren't familiar with it.
Letter recognition is an important component of language arts activities at the toddler level. The child's name offers a relevant source of letter recognition practice for toddlers. Print out each child's name in large bubble letters. The kids fill in the bubble letters with craft supplies to make it an artistic display. Examples include finger painting the letters, gluing tissue paper squares inside, decorating them with rubber stamps or filling them with stickers.
Another aspect of toddler language arts is to build sentences that make sense. To prepare for this game, create sets of word cards that include both a picture and a word. Make at least five different sets of cards. Each set of word cards has the same theme. For example, you might create a set of colors, animals, shapes, numbers and vehicles. Each child gets a card from each category. The child thinks of a sentence using all of the words from the cards. If five words is too much, start with two or three cards per child.
This game offers toddlers another chance to improve their letter recognition skills. Create sets of letter cards that the kids can match. For toddlers with little experience in letter recognition, make two identical letter cards for each pair. For toddlers with a more experience with letters, make the pairs slightly different. For example, you might make one card with the letter and the other half of the pair a picture of something that starts with the letter. You might write the letter A on one card and draw an apple on another for the pair. Another option is to write the upper case letter on one card and the lower case letter on the other. Make pairs of cards for all of the letters. You can work with the entire alphabet or focus on a certain set of letters. Mix up the cards and let the kids find the pairs, or use the cards to play Memory.