Toddlers love to explore and are naturally curious about everything in their environment. To further develop their curiosity within our Toddler 2 program this month, we set up a tuff tray laid with soap foam, ice, and fish toys. During the activity we observed many wonderful things that the toddlers did; exploring and playing kindly together as a group, lathering their hands with soap to feel the texture, verbalizing colours out loud, “blue”, and talking about the toy fishes, “swimming”.
As well, it was interesting to see how differently each toddler interacted with the foam, ice, and fish toys. One of the toddlers noticed a hole in the ice ball and filled the empty hole with toy fishes and soon other children wanted to do the same. Another toddler decided to wash their arms and face in the foam. Some toddlers were content with just holding the ice ball in their hands. All of these are great examples showing how important it is to allow children to be curious learners because it leads to creative play, and creativity is so vital for skills such as engagement, and problem-solving.
