Responding Positively To A Toddlers Exploratory Behaviour

[anupreetham.radha]

How would you, as an educator, support and respond positively to an infant’s and/or a toddler’s exploratory behaviour? For example, how you would react to:
• a young infant who has just learnt to crawl and is scooting around the indoor area?
• A toddler who pushes a chair up to a wall to try to reach a book you read to them earlier and you placed on a high shelf?

My answer is:
Take an interesting toy and set it down just outside the baby’s reach. After a moment be helpful and hand over the toy if needed, but we can find that the baby soon loves to scoot, crawl and wiggle around to get things. . I also like to sit or lay a few feet away from baby playing with the ball myself. Sometimes it will catch his interest and he will come crawling over to check it out. Things to consider when encouraging the baby to move: ball and toys that roll, a safe place to explore, household objects, eg. saucepans, lids, plastic cups etc, avoid the items which has the chance of choking hazard.
Toddler trying to reach the books from the bookshelves has risk of falling books or bookshelves on the baby. So move the book cases away from the areas, where the toddler spends more time to play. Obstacles may cause injury to the babies, while exploring the room. Put more toys and encourage the baby to play with it or put the books on the bottom shelves, in that way the baby has something more interesting to get the books and explore with it. Here consider the book shelve must have properly screwed as a safety measure in order to avoid falling out.
Also offering some pull or push toys to play with may help him to be a confident walker. Things to consider on pushing the chair, as it should not be a folding chair because it may fold up unexpectedly.

Please tell me, is this correct and enough?
Thankyou,
Regards,
Anu

[Lorina]

The first point is good! The second point is not about safety. It's about the toddler wanting to listen to the story you read. So, you can place it somewhere safe where the toddler can have access to it and to reach it safely. Then you can sit with the toddler and explore and read the book together...

Hope this helps,

,
Lorina

[anupreetham.radha]

Thanks Lorina. As you said, i added more points regarding safety only. Thanks for showing me the right track.
Regards
Anu