Know

Curiosity drives infants and toddlers to investigate and explore their environment. Through exploration, infants and toddlers play with and manipulate a variety of materials while repeating enjoyable actions and gaining a sense of pleasure while learning.

Most infants learn to explore objects with all of their senses: seeing, touching, hearing, tasting and smelling. Through safe exploration, they also begin to develop ways of learning and gathering information about objects. Researchers have found that 12-month-old infants can remember and copy some actions they see up to four weeks later, even without practicing the actions in the meantime (Klein & Meltzoff 1999).

了解婴儿和蹒跚学步的发展，以及戏剧的作用，可以帮助护理人员选择材料以满足小孩的独特需求和兴趣，并支持他们的发展和学习。狗万app怎么下载

Selecting Materials

在为婴儿或幼儿环境中选择材料时，护理人员有许多选择。这些材料有助于设置学习阶段。狗万app怎么下载婴儿和幼儿在能够看到和玩家中也发现的材料时，婴儿和幼儿可能会感到安全感。

While infants and toddlers explore materials that are interesting to them, it is the caregiver that helps make the experience meaningful. Caregivers should select materials that are:

• Culturally relevant:Do these materials reflect and respect the racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and family diversity of the program and of the broader community?
• Developmentally appropriate:Do these materials allow infants and toddlers to play in a variety of ways? Do these materials help us reach important learning goals for infants and toddlers?
• Linked to children’s interests:Do these materials reflect the infant and toddlers’ current interests and help spark new interests?

文化相关

Infant and toddler play and learning materials should be culturally relevant. But what does that mean? Cultural relevance means your choice of materials should reflect the backgrounds, knowledge and experiences of the diverse children in your room. By choosing materials that validate and empower children of all racial, ethnic and social backgrounds, you will build a bridge between children’s home and school lives that will provide a strong foundation for learning.

There many simple ways to expose children to positive images of people from a variety of backgrounds:

• Display pictures that represent all children, families and staff in your program.
• Display pictures of men and women in a variety of jobs (police officer, construction worker, teacher, chef).
• Include items that represent cultures from around the world (scarves, cooking utensils, musical instruments)
• Stock your learning space with books that give positive messages about age, gender, race, culture, special needs, different families and linguistic diversity (e.g., alphabet and counting books from various cultures).
• 请求家庭成员从家里借给您的物品。
• Dolls should represent a range of ages, races and abilities.
• Play traditional and contemporary music from around the globe.

Above all, remember to engage families in making your learning space a culturally appropriate space. Display framed pictures of families. Create family books with the children. Encourage family members to share their home language and help you label items in the room with words from that language.

Developmentally Appropriate

Toys and materials in your learning space should be developmentally appropriate. This means they should match the stage of development of the children in your care. Because children develop at different rates, choosing developmentally appropriate materials means you should have a range of toys available that can accommodate differences between individual children’s skills, interests and characteristics. A room stocked with developmentally appropriate materials “fits” the child—the child should not have to adjust to “fit” the learning space!

In infancy and toddlerhood, children develop and change dramatically. Caregivers should consider what toys and materials match their current development and how materials can support ongoing development and learning. For example, looking at and reading books with infants and toddlers can support the following types of development:

• Emotional:Book reading and quiet book areas give infants and toddlers an opportunity to relax and recharge.
• 社会的：Looking at books with a caregiver or friend can help strengthen a relationship.
• Motor:Turning the pages of a book uses and enhances fine-motor skills.
• Language:Caregivers can read with and help infants and toddlers explore books, pictures and new words.
• Cognitive:Infants and toddlers are introduced to new words, text and pictures.

Developmentally appropriate toys facilitate learning through play. When such toys are offered in a safe environment, infants and toddlers can move around and interact with them and with each other. If toys are too difficult or advanced, infants and toddlers may become frustrated. In addition, if toys are too simple, they may become bored and seek to entertain themselves in unsafe ways (e.g., running throughout the room or climbing on furniture). Through interactions, caregivers can help infants and toddlers explore developmentally appropriate materials and see themselves as competent learners.

作用的一部分是可发育适当的材料包括尽可能具有最喜欢的物品倍数。具有令人垂涎的物品（例如，娃娃，卡车或音乐项目）的重复将减少婴儿和蹒跚学步的挫折，并鼓励儿童之间的积极相互作用。重要的是要记住婴幼儿和幼儿有许多其他自然机会，开始学习“接受”护理人员指导;狗万app怎么下载例如，随着幼儿协商，谁将下一下幻灯片，或者随着年龄较大的婴儿在群体时间内学会每个分享他们的歌曲想法。

Examples of developmentally appropriate materials for older infants (about 7–12 months) include:

• 建筑物的软块
• Baby dolls
• 大球
• Nesting toys (e.g., plastic cups)
• Plastic and wood vehicles with wheels

Examples of developmentally appropriate materials for toddlers (about 24 months) include:

• Wooden puzzles with 4–12 pieces
• Dress-up clothes, puppets
• Chalkboard with large pieces of chalk
• Blocks, transportation toys
• 更详细的图片书籍

Refer to the two attachments later in this lesson,Selecting Materials(Learn section) andMeeting Infants’ and Toddlers’ Needs: Developmentally Appropriate Materials（适用部分），了解为婴幼儿和幼儿选择玩具和材料的卓越指南。

As you learned in the Safety course, you should make sure the materials you provide are safe. All materials in your learning space should be made for infants and/or toddlers. Ensure your room is free of toxic materials (e.g., certain plants or art supplies). Make sure you carefully supervise materials that could be difficult for developmentally younger children.

Linked to Children’s Interests

护理人员可以通过在互动和经验期间提供吸引人的玩具来构建婴儿和幼儿的游戏。有效材料是安全的，并补充婴儿或幼儿的能力，优势和利益。例如，对于表达对动物兴趣的幼儿，护理人员可以将塑料动物玩具添加到他喜欢玩耍的感官或块区域。

Materials that can be used in a variety of ways and that meet infants’ and toddlers’ developmental needs can provide a sense of security. Opportunities created for infants and toddlers to easily access, have fun with and manipulate materials that meet their interests and learning styles help infants and toddlers:

• Feel competent and recognize they have the ability to do different things and express ideas
• Develop self-help skills
• Interact with their caregivers and peers
• Feel calm and supported

Remember some families may not value play the way other families do. Some families may not have an environment that allows for safe play or a tradition of special time or floor play with their infant or toddler. Learn about families, seek to understand differences and find what is most important in the care of their infants and toddlers.

Open-Ended Materials

Not all toys are created equal. Some toys spark imagination and some hinder it. You might have noticed that young children are often more interested in the box than the toy that came inside it. Why? Because the box can become anything. It becomes a drum when you hit it, a house when you put a doll inside it, a hat when you put it on your head and a mask when you play hide and seek behind it. The possibilities are endless. Infants and toddlers learn and explore more when a toy is only limited by their imaginations. Consider the following list and think about why toys spark or limit imaginative play.

Toys that may limit imaginative play:

• Action figures or plastic dolls with preset accessories or movements
• Toys that talk, sing or dance
• Toys that are branded, such as with a TV show or popular character

Toys and materials that spark imaginative play:

• Dress-up clothes
• Large boxes
• Baby dolls
• Musical instruments
• Writing and art materials
• Items that are “open-ended” or can be used in a variety of different ways (e.g., blocks, scarves)

Linked to Developmental Goals

也许最重要的是要思考为什么哟u have selected the materials in your room. Ask yourself: how will this toy help infants and toddlers meet their individual learning and development goals? What will they learn from the toy? Use your knowledge of learning and development standards for infants and toddlers and your curriculum guidelines to shape your classroom decisions. Select materials that will help individual children in your classroom work on their current developmental or learning goals.

Look for materials that promote infant and toddler development in a variety of ways. For example, perhaps you have colorful mobiles hung low for younger infants to grasp, kick and move to assist with their fine- and gross-motor development. These mobiles could be constructed out of different colored and textured fabrics so as infants and caregivers interact with them, caregivers can make comments about the different characteristics (“I see you just grabbed the red string,” or “Oooh, that one feels soft doesn’t it?”) These comments help children’s cognitive understanding of the world around them and build their early vocabularies.

See

Watch this video for more ideas about the selection and use of materials to support learning and development in infant and toddler care.

使婴儿学习环境中的大部分材料狗万app怎么下载

Do

When it comes to selecting materials for infants and toddlers, be sure to:

• Talk to a trainer, coach or supervisor about materials that are most appropriate for your learning space.
• Offer materials that challenge infants and toddlers but are not so complex they cause frustration.
• Change materials in response to infants’ and toddlers’ growth and development.
• Include duplicates of favorite items.
• Make adaptations so that all infants and toddlers can be included in experiences and can use materials in the learning environment.
• Ask families to contribute materials from their own homes.
• Reflect on the materials in your learning space. If you notice any biased materials, make a change.