Learning program for 1 year old

Learning, Play, and Your 1- to 2-Year-Old (for Parents)

Kids transition from babies to toddlers during the second year of life. Shaky first steps give way to confident walking and climbing. Your toddler will be on the move, so be sure to childproof your home to prevent household accidents.

Language Skills

Kids this age make big gains in understanding language and figuring out how to communicate. By 15 months, most say their first words and point to ask for something or to get help. They can follow directions when given with both words and a gesture. By 18 months, they follow 1-step directions without gestures.

During year two, vocabulary increases slowly over the first 6 months and then expands quickly during the second 6 months. Vocabulary grows from 1 or 2 words to about 50 words. Toddlers will use more gestures, like blowing kisses and shaking the head “yes.”

Toddlers understand much more than they can express. This can be frustrating for your child and may lead to tantrums.

Fine Motor Skills

Hand–eye coordination and fine motor skills continue to improve. With better control over fingers and hands, toddlers learn to scribble and try to use switches, buttons, and knobs. Choose busy boxes and other age-appropriate toys for them to explore.

Play

As a baby, your child "played" with toys by shaking, banging, or throwing them. Your toddler now tries to use things the right way, so is more likely to stack blocks, listen or talk into a toy phone, or push a toy car.

Toddlers enjoy having other kids around. They often copy other children while playing. But don't expect them to "play" cooperatively with each other or to be thrilled about sharing toys. Have plenty of toys for everyone and be prepared to step in when they don't want to share. Older siblings can be role models when it comes to teaching, sharing, and taking turns.

Once toddlers learn to walk, there's no turning back. Yours will want to keep moving and build on this newfound skill. Provide lots of chances to be active and practice running, jumping, and climbing in safe surroundings.

Toddlers love to copy you doing chores. Provide age-appropriate toys that will encourage this, such as a toy vacuum to use while you're cleaning or pots, pans, and spoons to play with while you're cooking. Other toys that toddlers enjoy include:

• brightly colored balls
• blocks, stacking, and nesting toys
• fat crayons or markers
• age-appropriate animal or people figures and dolls
• toy cars and trains
• shape sorters, peg boards
• simple puzzles
• push, pull, and riding toys

Reading continues to be important. Your toddler can follow along with a story and point to objects in the pictures as you name them. Encourage toddlers to name things they recognize.

Chat about the books you read together and the things you did that day. Ask questions and encourage your toddler to reply by waiting for a response, then expand on those replies.

Toddlers develop at different rates, and there is a wide range of normal development.

Talk to your doctor if you have any questions or concerns about your toddler's development.

Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD

Date reviewed: May 2022

1 Year Old Lesson Plans

Wondering what to teach your toddler? Take a look at these 1 year old lesson plans, perfect for little ones. Includes activities by theme!

At a year old, the thought of having a lesson plan can seem crazy. She’s only a toddler, you think. She just finished being a baby.

Still, this is the age when your child’s curiosity is limitless. She’s enamored by her world and willing to explore, make mistakes, and keep learning. The goal of creating 1 year old lessons plans isn’t so much to “teach” as it is to give her the opportunity to continue doing what she does best: learning.

She’s building synapses in the brain, putting pieces together to make sense of her surroundings. Educational activities, whether for yourself or even her caregiver, can give everyone a sense of structure and routine. And with weekly toddler lesson plans, you can reinforce a theme over the course of many days.

Weekly themes for 1 year old lesson plans

And that’s exactly what I share here. Don’t think so much about making sure your child learns the alphabet and numbers. Instead, draw on her curiosity and tie in those elements along the way.

For instance, you might count the animals you see on a farm, or expose her to new words as you read about them. You might take her on a “field trip” to visit an observatory or provide a sensory experience by going to the beach.

If anything, these 1 year old lesson plans give you a loose structure to plan your days in case you’re out of ideas. The best part? You’re modeling your own excitement and eagerness to explore, making it easier for her to follow suit.

Check out these weekly themes for 1 year old lesson plans. Many of these ideas are free and easy to do, often at home. They encourage language and gross motor skills, and you’ll find plenty of books to read, places to visit, and crafts to do:

1. Farms

• Song: Old McDonald Had a Farm
• Read: Children’s books about farms
• Field trip: Visit a local farm
• Crafts: Do farm-theme crafts for kids

Free resources: Want ideas on what to do with your little one? Join my newsletter and grab your printable calendar of fun and simple toddler activities! Check them off as you go along, or use the blank template to add your own ideas. Get it below—at no cost to you:

2. Gardening

• Read: Children’s books about gardening
• Numbers: Count the number of leaves on a plant or insects you find
• Field trip: Visit a botanical garden
• Crafts: Grow green beans (in warm seasons) or peas (in cool ones) from seed
• Food: Eat fruits and vegetables found in books you read
• Colors: Talk about different-colored flowers, fruits, and vegetables

3.

• Song: Sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
• Read: Space books for preschoolers and toddlers
• Field trip: Visit an observatory
• Numbers: Name and count the planets in the solar system
• Crafts: Do space activities for kids

4. Parts of the body

• Song: Hokey Pokey or Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
• Numbers: Count fingers and toes
• Sensory exploration: Point out different smells, use a sensory table

5. Seasons of the year

• Read: Children’s books about seasons
• Numbers: Collect and count nature items, depending on the season
• Field trip: Visit a seasonal place, like the beach during the summer or a poppy reserve during spring time
• Crafts: Do easy and fun activities about the seasons

6.

• Song: The Wheels on the Bus
• Read: Children’s books about cars
• Count: Count how many cars you see or walk by
• Field trip: Ride a bus, visit a car museum or small-aircraft takeoff points, or watch construction trucks
• Colors: Point out different colors of automobiles
• Sign language: Learn baby signs for car, boat, airplane, truck
• Sensory activity: Fill a sensory table with sand and place toy construction trucks inside

7. Weather

• Read: Weather books for kids
• Language: Introduce words like rain, wind, fog, snow, hot, cold, lightning and rainbow
• Crafts: Create a weather forecast! Print out an icon and the accompanying word for the day’s weather (for instance, a cloud with rain and the word “rain” below). Hang the day’s weather forecast on a wall and swap it out each day.
• Colors: Talk about the colors you can use to describe the weather (“gray” or “blue” to describe the sky, or the “white” clouds).

8. Oceans and beaches

• Read: Children’s books about the beach
• Field trip: Take a trip to the beach, or visit a local aquarium or marina
• Sensory activities: Turn field trips into sensory activities by exploring sand and water
• Song: Sing Baby Shark or Baby Beluga

9. Dinosaurs

• Field trip: Visit your local natural history museum and look at dinosaur fossils
• Numbers: Count how many toy dinosaurs he has and arrange them by size
• Crafts: Do crafts about dinosaurs

10. Apples

• Numbers: Introduce fractions (yes!) by talking about how you slice an apple into halves, quarters, and 1/8 slices
• Read: The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
• Song: Sing Apples and Bananas
• Food: Eat an apple, or bake an apple pie together
• Colors: Talk about different-colored apple varieties
• Field trip: Visit an apple farm where you can pick your own
• Crafts: Create an apple craft

11.

• Read: Check out the ultimate list of pumpkin books for preschoolers and young toddlers
• Field trip: Visit a pumpkin patch, especially during the fall
• Crafts: Decorate miniature pumpkins with finger paint
• Numbers: Count how many pumpkins you can see at the patch
• Colors: Describe the different colors of pumpkins
• Sensory activity: Gently touch different textures of pumpkins, from rough and bumpy to smooth and shiny
• Food: Bake pumpkin pie cupcakes together

12. Swimming

• Read: Children’s books about swimming
• Field trip: Take a dip in your pool or visit a local pool
• Numbers: Count how many times you carry him up and down into the water
• Sensory activity: Describe what he feels: the cool water, the sounds of his splashes

13.

• Song: Sing Five Little Monkeys
• Field trip: Visit the zoo
• Read: Zoo books for kids
• Numbers: Count how many animals you see (whether at the zoo or in a book)
• Craft: Print and color coloring sheets of zoo animals

14. Trains

• Song: Sing Down at the Station
• Field trip: Ride a train or visit a train museum
• Numbers: Watch a train go by and count the number of cars
• Crafts: Create crafts about trains

Conclusion

Even when my kids were only a year old, I loved turning educational “lessons” into a fun and engaging activity. Maybe that meant taking them to a pumpkin patch or counting clouds in the sky. Sometimes all it takes is using descriptive vocabulary, like talking about what you’re doing or the sounds you hear.

Even with 1 year olds, there’s always a way to make learning fun and nurture their curiosity.

Get more tips:

• Things to Teach a 1 Year Old
• Easy Arts and Crafts for 1 Year Olds (No Complicated Instructions!)
• 31 Activities for 1 Year Olds
• Fun Places to Take a 1 Year Old
• Rainy Day Activities for 1 Year Olds

Don’t forget: Join my newsletter and grab your PDF of fun and simple play activities:

Successful Baby Early Development Program (9 months - up to 3 years) - Colored milk

Lessons for children from 9 months to 1 year

Includes 5 to 6 educational games and tasks specially designed for children the indicated age.

Each lesson uses:

• games for the development of gross and fine motor skills (including finger games, with cereals, mosaics for kids, puzzles, etc.)
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• tactile contact with mother - massages with nursery rhymes, etc.
• creativity (using finger paints, gouache, plasticine, cereals, pencils, glue sticks)
• speech development (songs, imitation of animals, finger games, etc.)
• enrichment of sensory experience (formation of ideas about the shape, color and size of objects) nine0012
• formation of mathematical concepts and skills

Children who start attending the Child Development Center at such an early age subsequently experience fewer difficulties in learning new material, in communicating with peers and, therefore, adapt to a preschool institution more quickly.

Classes for children from 1 to 2 years old

The child's abilities increase, the baby begins to walk, which means that he acquires independence and inquisitiveness in learning about the world around him.

The duration, the number of games and exercises, the complexity of classes are increasing.

Particular attention is paid to the development of speech: understanding the words of an adult and the appropriate reaction to what they hear, replenishing the child's passive vocabulary with new words. In the course of performing musical-rhythmic exercises and elements of gymnastics, the baby's motor activity and gross motor skills develop. Fun adventures in the classroom contribute to the further development of memory, thinking and attention of the child. Complicated methods of modeling and drawing. At this age, children get acquainted with the direction of artistic activity - applique from different materials. nine0005

Active work is being carried out on the sensory development of children, not only ideas about color, shape, size are introduced, tasks are offered for comparing objects, ordering by size.

Each lesson uses:

• games for the development of gross and fine motor skills (including finger games, with cereals, mosaics for kids, puzzles, etc.)
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• tactile contact with mother - massages with nursery rhymes, etc.
• creativity (using finger paints, gouache, plasticine, cereals, pencils, glue sticks)
• speech development (songs, imitation of animals, finger games, etc. )
• Children are introduced to the world of letters and numbers nine0012

Classes for children from 2 to 3 years old

The kid is a completely independent person who can think, experience, love, see beauty, feel the joy of learning, creation and creativity.

The age from 2 to 3 years is rightfully considered by psychologists to be transitional. In children, some features of an early age are still noticeable, but at the same time they are already at the borders of the transition to the younger preschool age (from 3 years old).

During this period, it is necessary to pay more attention to the development of cognitive interest. The lessons include elements of mathematical development (the simplest operations with sets, familiarity with geometric shapes and sizes of objects), graphic exercises (the ability to hold and use a pencil). Tasks for the formation of coherent speech come to the fore. There appears such an important element of game activity as a plot-role-playing game, which plays a huge role in mental, physical, mental and social development. nine0068