Two-year-olds are learning how to move out into the world with confidence in their own abilities and a confident expectation that they can look to others for help when necessary.
Most two-year-olds approach life as if it were a major research project.
They are continually investigating how things work, moving them around, taking them apart and undertaking close observations. They are fascinated by the effect of their actions on other people, objects and substances and need to repeat their experiments again and again.
Much of their exploration involves movement, of themselves or objects, and if it grabs their interest they can be absorbed for long periods of time.
This is particularly the case when the object or activity matches the child's schematic preoccupations such as transporting, enveloping, rotation or trajectory.
But absorbing such a constant flow of information can be overwhelming.
Emotional collapses can also result from sensory overload. Exploring from the secure base of a trusting, warm relationship with a key person, who sensitively balances the new and exciting with the familiar and predictable, helps a two-year-old to manage their exciting explorations more confidently. This relies on practitioners' ability to be both supportive of their moves to independence, but still accepting of their need for dependence.
Understanding and confusion
As their explorations broaden, a two-year-old's understanding of themselves and of how other people and the world work expands at a rapid rate. Their physical skills and interest in moving around help them to see things from different perspectives and increase their understanding of spatial concepts. Manipulating objects and tools leads to understanding how different parts function and the effects of the child's actions on the object. This also leads to using objects and tools imaginatively, and to making marks and understanding that one thing can stand for another.
Although toddlers may sometimes appear wise beyond their years, it is often difficult for them to apply their knowledge to new and different situations and so they seem to lack understanding. This is often because their social understanding of what is acceptable and unacceptable is still being learned. Adults may praise drawing on paper, while drawing on walls and books causes dismay, but to the child it is an expression of the same ideas.
A two-year-old is at the beginning of understanding time, so does not have the same approach to getting things done or reaching a destination that an adult has. They are much more interested in the process of what they are doing, in what is happening in the moment or on the way, and can completely forget that they were involved in putting the bikes in the shed or wanted to go to the swimming pool.
FEARS AND RITUALS
All these rapid changes in cognitive understanding lead young children to make connections between their experiences and they form their own ideas about things from this.
Mostly this is helpful to the child. For example, not yet knowing the word 'roof' for the top of a car, Jules called it the car's 'head'. But sometimes it means that quite ordinary things such as vacuum cleaners can be linked in a child's mind with something scary, giving rise to what may seem to us like irrational fears.
The unpredictability of their lives means two-year-olds often have routines or rituals that give them some measure of control over their immediate world and help them to manage scary situations. These rituals need to be honoured and fears met with sympathy and understanding.
In your teams or networks discuss:
* What kinds of fears or rituals do your key children have?
* How can you support children's self-assurance?
* How do you accommodate a child's transitional object in play so that the child can relax and enjoy the play experiences provided Observe your key children:
* What particular behaviours indicate when they are feeling confident and want to explore independently or show when they need close comfort and support?
* How do they like to play? In which areas of the space, at which levels and with which resources?
* Do they display any particular schemas?
Plan to support confident exploration:
* Identify the role of the keyperson at different times of day and in relation to children's play on written plans.
* Plan play opportunities, the play environment and resources to reflect children's schematic preoccupations as identified in observations. For example:
* Provide containers (buckets, bags, crates) and trolleys for transporting collections of smaller items around
* Plan play opportunities where children can wrap themselves or objects up in a range of materials.
* Create dens or tents in part of the setting using large boxes, curtain material and tunnels.
* Have safe spaces and materials for throwing, dropping, rolling and challenging opportunities for running and climbing.
* Ensure that there are duplicates of resources that have wheels and move along from small vehicles to large bikes and trolleys.