Developing a toddler room that taps into children's language interests takes some careful planning. Mary Evans asks four settings for advice.

Children gain a significant ability with language between the ages of 18 and 36 months. According to early years consultant Kathy Brodie, a child's vocabulary expands from around 50 simple words to about 200 words around this time, and they will be able to form sentences.

'At the upper end of this age range, they will start to retell a story and pervert it because they think it is funny,' explains Ms Brodie. 'You start getting the mischief of language. Complexity of language develops through this period from basic nouns and verbs to the more abstract concepts such as time, positional terms and emotions.

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