How to Support Infant and Toddler Development

My Favorite Simple Ways to connect and Play With Infants and Toddlers How to Support Infant and Toddler Development In this episode, a live video recording with friends of Learn With Less, Ayelet chats about some simple ways to connect and play with infants and toddlers, songs to sing during caregiving and play routines, and play materials you can use (hint: you already have these in your home!!!) to support infant and toddler development. Now, I certainly don’t know everything there is to know about infant and toddler development. But, over the last several years, I’ve sharpened and deepened my professional knowledge as a pediatric speech-language pathologist. I’ve mothered my way through two very different parenting experiences. I’ve also interviewed countless professionals about the ways we can support infants and toddlers in the areas of cognition, communication, motor/sensory, and social/emotional development. QUICK ACCESS TO LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE: Learn With Less Podcast featuring Music Therapist, Meryl Brown “Thirty Million Words” Book by Dana Suskind (affiliate link) Learn With Less podcast episode on sensory processing, featuring Occupational Therapist Jill Loftus  Learn With Less curated Pinterest boards to reduce overwhelm TEXT TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE Welcome to episode 46 of the Learn With Less podcast! Today, I’m sharing the replay of a live video recording I did with friends of Learn With Less, in which I chat about some simple ways to play and connect, ideas for songs to sing during caregiving and play routines, and play materials you can use (hint: you already have these in your home!!!) to support infant and toddler development. Welcome! It’s so nice to be here on a Friday. It’s a nice Friday morning, mid-December – I cannot believe that it is officially mid-December! We’re just going to chat, I have a few things to share with you, to tell you about. If you have something that you have a burning question about, or just want to hear about, I’d love to hear from you. So, go ahead and introduce yourself in the comment section below, go ahead and tell me who’s here, where you are, where you’re tuning in from, how old your baby is, whether you work with children, I’m excited to hear from you! FAVORITE MATERIALS TO SUPPORT INFANT AND TODDLER DEVELOPMENT I want to talk about simple ways that we can play and connect… thinking about those kinds of experiences that I try to offer both my own children – I have an 11-month old infant and a nearly 4-year old… I can’t call him a toddler anymore. He is toddler-ish and yet he is a big boy. It’s crazy. But basically, when I try to break down those experiences that I try to offer my own children as well as the clients I work with as a speech-language pathologist and as a parent educator, because I do a lot of one-on-one work with families of all kinds, as well, I feel like a lot of these fall into the categories of: music, early literacy, sensory, and the use of visual supports.