Toddler Areas of Study


Setting the table, polishing silver, washing dishes, spooning beans (into real glass jars!), brushing her hair, sweeping the floor—these exercises help your toddler practice caring for herself, teach her cause and effect (e.g., What happens if the jar breaks? How do we safely clean it up? How will we replace it?), help develop strong large and fine motor skills, and engage her in shared work through which she develops empathy, conflict resolution, and trust with people outside home and family.


All knowledge comes through the senses. In Toddlers, we introduce your child to a wide range of sensory information, methodically and intentionally building his capacity to identify and discriminate between them: yellow versus red, large versus small, rough versus smooth, sour versus sweet. Your toddler learns to recognize patterns, sort colors, discern tastes, identify similar sounds, and order shapes by size and volume through engrossing, tactile explorations.


Math is intrinsic to your child’s sensorial explorations in Toddlers. Through Nesting and Cylinder Blocks, Tower of Cubes and other tactile experiences, students develop the skills—like one-to-one correlation, counting to ten, and matching symbol to quantity—that lay the groundwork for mathematical learning.


Read-alouds, picture sequencing, guided questions, language cards, and other pre-reading activities help your toddler build vocabulary and strengthen his receptive and expressive language skills. This language development happens in the context of engaging humanities experiences that introduce him to the wider world in concrete, interactive ways.


As your child develops mastery of the English language, he’s also introduced to another in weekly 30-minute Spanish classes. He sings songs, plays games, listens to stories, and participates in other activities that help him develop a basic Spanish vocabulary.


What happens when we combine water and flour? Why does butter make the bread taste better? What do plants eat? Why does the dirt in our classroom garden make our hands dirty? How do we clean it off? Fully embodied sensory experiences indirectly familiarize your child with the foundational concepts of cause and effect and other natural laws at the heart of future scientific studies.


Children are developing physical balance in Toddlers. They’re also practicing the rituals, routines, and habits of a balanced life. There’s a time for movement and wiggling and a time for quiet, focused work, a time to be outdoors, a time for resting, and a time for preparing and eating healthy food.


Your child enjoys dedicated weekly music instruction as well as integrated lessons in the course of every school day. She learns and sings the Hello song every morning and the Goodbye song in the afternoon. She experiences music that makes her want to dance and move, music that helps her focus, music that comes from other cultures, music she can make with her own voice and sounds she can make with different kinds of instruments.


Using chalk, paint, yarn, paper, glue, clay, sponges, brushes, your child learns to hold, apply, manipulate, stick, and mold. During 30 minutes of dedicated art class each week and as part of every school day, he develops his personal aesthetic, the fine motor skills he’ll use later for writing, a feel for working with different materials, and the responsibility for cleaning up after a creative work session.