Teaching With Toddlers - Using Their Five Senses

Just like adults learn through their five senses of touch, hear, see, smell and taste so it is with toddlers. When you desire to teach children especially toddlers keep in mind that the more you involve their senses, the greater success you'll discover.

Teaching With Touch

When your baby starts to walk you will notice that you will now have to keep a close eye out on your exploring toddler. Toddlers love to touch new textures with their hands. As you notice them touch and explore, take time to teach them the things they are exploring by naming them out loud and encouraging them to repeat it after you. Not only will this help build their vocabulary and sound skills at an early age, but it will ease the frustration for you in the future when your toddler is actually trying to tell you something.

Hands Signs Can Cause Less Frustration In The Future

With that said, you also may want to consider teaching your baby Sign Language before they become a toddler. It is a fact that babies who learn sign language can communicate sooner and are less frustrated and fussy.

Child Development Resources

There are many early child development toys out on the market that can help your child develop skills through their touch with toddlers.

• Leapfrog has several early developmental toys your child can touch and hear a variety of learning sounds and words.

• ClickNKids is a great way to encourage your older toddler to begin to read even before they go to school. It will also help them achieve great computer skills as well with toddlers.

Teaching Through Sound

As your toddler hears you point and speak to things, your toddler will begin to sound out the words. Now is a great time to not only teach them their national language, but a foreign language as well. Have you ever heard the saying, "You can't train an old dog new tricks." Well, God made it that your baby's brain goes through a dramatic change after birth. There are lots of connections the brain begins to make to the baby's new exploring world. It is a fact that the early years of your baby's brain development are critical for the later years of his/her life. With this fact in mind, it is a great time for your toddler now to be introduced to several languages as well!

Child Development Resources

There are many early child development resources out on the market that can help your child develop skills through their hearing senses with toddlers.

• Amazon is a great place to find bilingual and early child development toys at a great price! At Amazon search for bilingual toys.
  

Teaching Through Eyes & Nose

It is said that 30% of the population learn visually. Flash cards are a perfect way to teach your toddler visually.

Teaching During A Nature Walk

Also frequent nature walks with toddlers also are fun and healthy. As you take your toddler for a walk be sure to point out the beautiful nature. Let your toddler take the time to not only look, but touch and smell the world around him as you point out the colors, shapes, and smells of the objects. Whether it has a sweet smell, or a stinky smell, or a bright shade or a dark shade your toddler will listen and learn all kinds of things while you both get some important exercise.

Child Development Resources

There are many early child development resources out on the market that can help your child develop skills through their eyes and nose with toddlers.

• Brainy Baby has great flash cards such as letters, numbers, animals, colors & shapes, pictures words, sign language, and much more!
• To teach the sense of smell with toddlers consider buying them a book on smelling senses.
  

Teaching Through Taste

Giving a variety of foods to toddlers is important for their diet. If you are a parent of a toddler you will begin to notice that what your toddler loved one day might not be what he likes the next day or what your toddler did not like yesterday, he will eat today if you give the taste another try. As you do this with toddlers, you will notice that sometimes your toddler will eat all of the things on the plate and will even want more today and tomorrow they won’t want to eat much of anything. Many mothers can testify that this is quite normal for a toddler’s diet.

Child Development Resources

There are many picky eater cookbooks out on the market that can help you in your frustration during mealtime.