Destiny Baby

No parent needs a child care book as much as the parent of a toddler! The toddler years are an exciting and rewarding time, as your child learns to stand, walk, say words, and use the potty for the first time. Yet, along with all of these incredible milestones come all sorts of daunting parental challenges – from continuous cries in the middle of the night to the first boo-boos to erratic eating habits to public temper tantrums. What is a parent to do? (Read more…)

As a parent or caregiver, are you interested to learn more about teaching toddlers and how to create your own toddler or preschool curriculum to supplement your child’s schooling at daycare or kindergarten? You are in the right place. Teaching Toddlers is a series of tutorials/articles that teaches you to select and use educational toys and games for toddlers and preschoolers, reviews early child development learning tools for toddlers and preschoolers, and shows you how to create learning activities using every day household items together with your and your child’s imagination and creativity to give your child a headstart on reading, math and science literacy as well as a lifetime love of learning.

This is a resource page which includes links to all the specific articles on teaching toddlers, which are categorized below by chronological order.

Your comments are always welcome in the original article page and I encourage you to join the discussion. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at admin[at]destinybaby.com.

If you find this page useful, feel free to share it with others.

1. Early learning with your newborn

This article organizes and identifies where to find freely available, authoritative information on infant and early child development, especially developmental milestones for infants and toddlers. This is a guide for parents, caregivers and other family and friends who buy toys and games for our babies and children. Ideally, such toys should support the developmental stages of growth of a child. The main take away points are that infants and toddlers develop the basic mental processes of learning from birth to age 3 (focus, paying attention, persistence through frustration, communication and understanding, and pattern recognition).

2. Teaching toddlers to learn math

In this article, you will learn how mathematics and counting (along with reading and writing) are fundamental parts of your child’s learning, and the key concepts your child must learn before kindergarten in order to succeed in math in grade school. Preschoolers should already be on the path towards thinking of themselves as mathematicians, able to reason mathematically and to communicate mathematical ideas by talking and writing.

3. How to teach toddlers about science concepts

There are national science education standards that outline what students need to know, understand and be able to do in order to be scientifically literate at various grade levels. This article lays out the concepts your preschooler needs to know, with suggestions for how parents can teach science concepts.

4. Simple Science Activities You Can Do with your Toddler or Preschooler

This article discusses simple activities for incorporating science learning into your child’s everyday routine, outlining five basic scientific concepts for your child to build on learning future scientific facts.

5. How to teach toddlers to read with picture books

Different kinds of activities, including unstructured play, impact early learning for infants, toddlers and preschoolers. This article explains why the very common parent-child activity of picture-book reading may be the most effective way to encourage early knowledge and cognitive development. Books with pictures seem to be the ultimate educational learning toy.

6. How to teach toddlers with daily chores

This article shows ways to incorporate a learning curriculum for toddlers and preschoolers into everyday activities like letting children help with cleanup. As early as age two, learning to participate is another educational experience that leads to new aspects of independence. Our children learn to be part of the family, and later, part of the community, by helping.

7. Teaching toddlers through unstructured play

This article shows how the best toys are those that can be used in a variety of ways, some of which your child will invent themselves. It also explains the importance of letting toddlers and preschoolers have regular, uninterrupted playtime that best promotes freedom and creativity.

8. Resources for teaching toddlers to read, count and become computer literate at home

This article reviews several commercial learning tools for toddlers that teach phonics, math, computer literacy, and more.

9. Teaching toddlers science with fun activities

This article explains the many simple science activities can you initiate to get your child to go down the scientific learning path. You don’t have to overwhelm them with a lot of bells and whistles; simple works best. You will learn how to introduce a few ideas and find hobbies or activities based on your child’s personality and interests to build cumulative understanding of scientific concepts.

10. Teaching toddlers science at home

This article highlights a selection of inexpensive toys and kits for teaching science to toddlers, preschoolers and young school-age children right at home. The types of science activities for toddlers covered by these kids include weather and climate, electricity, magnetism, the human body, mirrors, surface tensions, geology topics like volcanoes and oceans, scents, and more.

11. Teaching toddlers to learn online

This article is a review of what we found to be among the best (and free) sites online that feature learning games and activities for toddlers and preschoolers. While there lots of toddler games online offered by every toymaker, company, cartoon, and the like, how many are truly learning resources? This big, annotated list of sites reviewed by us has the answer.

Additional Resources

Here are some more posts which are not part of the article series, categorized by topics.

How to find and save on the best expert picked educational toys

Resources for turning lesson plans into online interactive games

Can video games stimulate learning?

Just how critical is reading to child development? This article also features links to reading resources for young children and opportunities to donate books for disadvantaged children.

Reviews of toddler activity tables, learning tables and musical tables

Reviews of floor play and activity mats for infants and toddlers

Resources keeping up with child development research and the best educational toys and games for toddlers and preschoolers

At DestinyBaby.com, we take toy safety seriously. Nothing is more important for toddlers and preschoolers who are full of curiosity and still learning so much about how the world works. In the right sidebar on this site we display an RSS feed of the latest recall notices related to children’s products from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. We also published a toy safety checklist for parents at ezinearticles.

More information has just come out in the latest report from the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). Over at the preschooler page on About.com, they are highlighting a new report from PIRG, “Trouble in Toyland.” The report features the latest toys that pose choking hazards, excessive amounts of lead and hormones or are too loud and could harm tiny eardrums. US PIRG has also launched an accompanying smart phone website that lets you look up hazardous toys right from your phone while you are out shopping at the store, and lets your report hazardous toys you find. The PIRG is all about empowering consumers and this is a great tool to do just that while keeping our children safe.

Here at DestinyBaby.com, to support our mission of bringing you the latest in educational toys, games and resources for the youngest children, we are starting a new feature, called “Kids Quiz” where you can play learning games online directly on our website with your toddler or pre-K little one! A new game will be posted periodically. Be sure to subscribe to the site so that you can stay up to date on everything we have to offer, not just these games, but the latest discounts and deals on educational learning toys and games!

In the past, we have talked about the educational potential of video games to stimulate learning. For this new series, all games were developed by Mama Destiny and our team using the wonderful and free curriculum development tools over at Classtools.net. If you are an educator, I highly encourage you to check out the website– you can easily create games from your lesson plans to be completed online, which lets you achieve two goals–promoting the use of computer technology and creating subject specific learning activities. Check out the first game below. It’s a really simple quiz to help little ones learn about the human body. One of the first things Destiny Baby could do was identify his eyes, nose, fingers, and toes, and we still like to play the naming game today. Hope you enjoy!

This is not an ad. It is a free educational game you can play right now!

Click here for full screen version

There is so much information on children and child development out there–each new study seems to say something different than the last. We can hardly keep up! One cool website that makes life a little easier by tracking breakthrough research on child development is the Children topic section at LiveScience.com. Here you can keep up with the latest scientific studies on how your little one’s mind works and what can best help her or him to succeed in life.

Now when it comes to choosing the best toys for toddler and young child development, you can take it a step further and have child development experts do it for you over at eBeanstalk.com. Each toy on their site is expert-selected and categorized by the child’s age. In fact if a child in your life has an upcoming birthday, you might consider ordering a gift series (with free shipping!) for them. Ebeanstalk.com will automatically send out a new toy every 3 months throughout the year, each tailored to your child’s mental development! Pretty cool, eh! We love the service and the customer service over at are extremely friendly and helpful.

These days you can both stay on top of the latest research on child development and have expert-recommended toddler toys and best-selling learning toys delivered to your doorstep!

From the experts over at eBeanstalk.com, this is another article on how to get your toddler to behave:

How Do I Get My Child to Say ‘Yes’?
By: Shari Harpaz, CCC-SLP (Speech-Language
Pathologist)

Does your child often respond ‘no’ when you ask them a question? When asked a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, most children will respond ‘no’ more often than ‘yes.’

Toddlers and pre-schoolers are at an age when they are egocentric and/or establishing independence (see all milestones). By saying ‘no’ they are making a clear statement that they don’t want to do something and now your hands are tied if you really needed them to do it. So what should a parent do?

Here are some tips to help get more of the response you’re looking for:

1. Try and ask questions in a “what”? Or “where”? Format instead of yes/no whenever possible. For example: if you’re child is pointing and you can’t determine what they want instead of saying “Do you want juice?” and having to go thru a list of items, ask “what do you want?”

2. Give your child a choice of 2-3 things you are willing to give them. (“Do you want to go to the park or to the book store”)? This way they feel empowered that they chose the activity, and you didn’t have to negotiate after a ‘no’ response.

3. Sometimes your best option is to simply TELL your child that this is what you are going to do/eat/have etc. Remember you’re the parent and know what’s best so don’t let your little negotiators always get their way!

For some activities that don’t involve ‘yes/no’ answers, check out…

You pick the game you want to play: Hand Picked Games at ebeanstalk.com

Which puzzle do you want to play with: Hand Picked Puzzles by the ebeanstalk.com Team of Mothers

Let’s “Pretend Play” and have some fun: Hand Picked Pretend Toys by the ebeanstalk.com Team of Experts

Check out additional discounts and deals from all of DestinyBaby.com merchants!