15.7: Curriculum Planning
Infants and toddlers have an amazing capacity to engage in learning and rapidly organize vast amounts of new information. Clearly, an infant or toddler who is exploring how something works or interacting with an adult or other children reveals an active mind that is discovering and making sense of the surrounding world of people and things.
Infants and toddlers experience the world and build knowledge holistically during simple moments of play, exploration, and interaction with objects and with other people. They constantly gather new information and make sense of it. Their minds actively take in sounds, words, patterns of movement, and the actions and reactions of people, creatures, and objects. They integrate new information into an increasingly complex system of knowledge. As infants expand their encounters with objects and people, they try out emerging skills, discover new actions, and experience feelings in new ways. In moments of play, they experiment, investigate, and invent solutions, trying to figure out how things work.[1]
Contexts for Infant/Toddler Curriculum
In planning curriculum for the birth-to-age-three period, teachers must be aware of what infants and toddlers do in play, both when they act on objects and when they interact with adults and peers. In essence, play is the “work” of infants and toddlers. When teachers are mindful of the ways in which each infant experiences a moment of play, that child’s learning agenda reveals itself. In response, teachers are able to plan curriculum that aligns with the infant’s inborn learning agenda. In developing curriculum for infants and toddlers, teachers plan for three learning contexts:
- The play environment as curriculum. Curriculum plans include the selection of play materials that add interest and complexity to distinct areas where infants and toddlers freely play.
- Interactions and conversations as curriculum. Curriculum plans address ways of being with infants and toddlers during interaction, including nonverbal interaction, conversations, cooperation, conflicts, and times when infants express strong feelings such as delight, sadness, anger, or frustration.
- Caregiving routines as curriculum. Curriculum plans include care routines, particularly mealtimes, diaper changes, and naptimes. Intentional teaching invites infants and toddlers to participate in care routines that deepen their relationship experiences and open up possibilities for building emerging skills and concepts.[2]
Observation as the Basis for Planning the Infant/Toddler Curriculum
Planning infant/toddler curriculum begins with teachers discovering, through careful listening and observation, each child’s development. Observation is an essential teaching skill. When teachers mindfully observe, they find out how individual children make discoveries and make meaning within everyday moments of play and interactions.
Observing for the purpose of assessing individual children’s learning means care