Toddlers’ large muscles are still developing, but they are also beginning to coordinate their hands and fingers with more skill, so it is important that you provide toddlers with lots of places to run and climb; fairly low places to jump from; music for dancing; smaller items to fit together and take apart; sand and water to pour, carry, and sift; items to balance and dump and fit pieces together; things to push or pull; and the chance to feed themselves with spoons.

Ramps and steps with play areas below can provide hours of fun and challenge for toddlers. Slides, low bikes to pedal, wagons to pull, small shopping carts or lawn mowers to push — all are valuable for children’s development. Open grassy areas give them space to run. Give a toddler a bucket of water, a three-inch paintbrush, and a wooden fence or the side of a building. Much of the typical toddler’s day is spent in large-muscle activities, so both your indoor and outdoor play areas should center around these types of activities and equipment.

Toddlers also are developing finer muscle control. Puzzles with knobs make it easy for them to remove and replace the pieces. They like fitting things into containers and then dumping them all out again: Try a plastic ice cream container filled with screw-type jar lids — the clatter is delightful!

Large pieces of blank paper work well for scribbling and drawing with markers or crayons. At first, children will make random marks or move the crayon back and forth across the page just for the fun of it. But gradually their marks become more controlled and begin to resemble circles and lines. Clay is wonderful to roll and squish, as Emilia has discovered. Usually toddlers prefer to work on the floor or to stand at a small table for these activities.

Appealing books for toddlers have sturdy paper pages and bright pictures. More and more book publishers are paying attention to the needs of the younger child. “Board” books (so named because their pages are made out of cardboard) are available with colorful, bright illustrations of familiar objects. Some new ones on the market include books on colors, shapes, and letters. Action songs — “The Wheels on the Bus,” “Johnnie Hammers with One Hammer,” and a simple version of the “Hokey-Pokey” — are always hits. Toddlers love to put their hand into a mystery bag or box and try to guess what they feel with their fingers. Dress-up clothes have large buttons, snaps, or zippers so children can fasten them themselves and for others. Get large cardboard blocks (or make some from empty milk cartons). Begin with some basic shapes in unit and table blocks. Find items toddlers can fit together, such as clean plastic bottles with their lids or egg cartons and colorful plastic eggs (with surprises inside the eggs).

Mealtimes will be messy, but young toddlers can begin to feed themselves with increasing skill — and they certainly won’t learn unless you give them the chance to practice. Likewise, learning to use the toilet may result in a few accidents. That’s part of life. Enlist children’s help to clean up.

On the other hand, you do not expect toddlers to color between the lines, to use watercolors, to build with tiny plastic blocks, to draw on small sheets of paper, to make realistic looking art products, or to feed themselves thin soups. Why? Because toddlers’ hands and fingers are not yet ready for such difficult tasks. Nor are their minds ready to deal with abstract paper-and-crayon tasks imposed on them. Match your expectations to their development.

All young children are much more interested in the doing rather than in coming up with an end product. Doing is real learning.

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