Toddler Curriculum: Social, Emotional, and Language Development
Visit a Toddler classroom at Crabapple Montessori School, and you may see a child lending a supporting hand to a younger classmate who is learning to walk on the balance beam. Or maybe you’ll see children taking turns at one of their favorite activities, selecting an object from the mystery bag to match it to a picture. Or maybe you’ll hear a child excitedly announce, “I did it!” at the moment he masters the skill of zipping up his jacket.
“Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.”
All of these activities are examples of the foundational life skills defined by Dr. Maria Montessori for the first three years of life. She described this as a period of intense mental activity, when the child is taking in everything the environment has to offer with what she called the “absorbent mind.”
A critical time for learning
Dr. Montessori identified the first six years of life as a sensitive period, when the child has a natural desire to learn certain things. If the skill is not acquired during this period, learning it later will be harder.
The Crabapple Montessori School classroom provides an orderly environment that supports toddlers during the sensitive period, so they can learn what they are ready to learn. At this age, they are learning to walk, control their hands, develop coordination, and expand their vocabulary. They are acclimating to the world and becoming independent.
Curriculum for early life and social interaction
The Crabapple Montessori School Toddler curriculum, for children ages 15 months through 3 years, curriculum is built around language skills, cooking, music, gardening, and movement activities.
Underlying all of the Toddler activities is the development of social skills. Children learn to take turns, negotiate, follow rules, help others, and create order. You’ll see them putting things back in their place when they are through using them. You may see a child pick up something someone else dropped or see a group of children waiting, with hands in their laps, for others to join them at the lunch table.
While the Montessori classroom is orderly, it’s also a playful place, where children are allowed to experiment – to make a mess or make a mistake. It’s all part of learning by doing.
You’re invited to visit and see what learning looks like in a Montessori Toddler classroom. Call us at 770.569.5200 to schedule a time. We serve students in Alpharetta, Milton, Roswell, Canton, Woodstock, Cumming in north metro Atlanta.
