We encourage your child to examine, create, and share as he broadens his language through interactions with his teachers and classmates in a safe, nurturing environment. Sensory and repetitive activities transform these new experiences into knowledge. Two year olds want to be independent. They want to explore, touch and mimic their peers and teachers. Their daycare curriculum focuses on language arts and literacy, mathematics, science, social and emotional development, gross and fine motor development. Through learning centers and age-appropriate activities, our two year olds have the ability to work at their own pace and learn to do tasks independently.
Activities in the two year old classrooms include:
Practicing writing skills while painting, drawing, and coloring, completing patterns, charting the daily weather and learning about recycling, participating in circle time, gross motor play, and learning about honesty and sharing.
Areas of Development:
The curriculum focuses on your two-year-old child’s primary areas of development.
Emotional Skills
Two year olds are experiencing a wide variety of emotions, much more than when they were infants and toddlers. We guide the children to express their emotions in healthy and safe ways. Caring teachers will show children different ways to convey their emotions, from sadness and frustration to happiness and joy.
Social Skills
We start with your child becoming aware of the other children in the classroom and move on to encouraging the children to engage in group play. Your child will be encouraged to engage in dramatic play activities, such as pretending to shop at the grocery store or acting out stories. These simple activities set the stage for the preschool years, when children’s social skills are more developed.
Communication Skills
Between the ages of two and three, children’s vocabulary can grow to nearly 300 words. We provide children with the tools they need to communicate within their classroom community by guiding them to put their desires into words. Children are encouraged to identify common objects and speak in three-to-five-word sentences.
Self-Help Skills
We provide activities designed to empower two year olds. Children’s independence will increase as they are introduced to fundamentals of hygiene and they accomplish basic self-help tasks, drinking from a cup during meal time and putting on their jackets and shoes. Teachers provide the children with many opportunities to master these tasks, because repetition is vital when it comes to learning a new skill.
Physical Skills
We address both gross motor skills, which strengthen the large muscle groups of the body, as well as fine motor skills. Children are prompted to climb, jump, hop, and run on the playground to strengthen their leg muscles. Two year olds are developing their fine motor skills in the Art Center, as they are finger painting, making collages, coloring with sidewalk chalk, and creating with play dough.
Cognitive Skills
Cognitive skills are the foundation of learning and knowledge. At age two, children’s cognitive skills are expanding quickly. We challenge the children to become more aware of their environment by asking questions and inviting them to solve problems. Teachers provide the children with many activities designed to encourage them to distinguish between textures, to identify shapes and colors, and to begin counting by memory or rote counting.
