Miss Mary's Music Notes

Language & Literacy

The Kindermusik  classroom for our Toddler classes includes children at varying levels of language development. During the years from one and a half to three your child’s vocabulary will expand from around a dozen words to almost one thousand!  Our Toddler class aids in this amazing transformation by focusing on language and literacy in the classroom and the At Home Materials.

“During the first months and years of life, children’s experiences with language and literacy can begin to form a basis for their later reading success. … Vocabulary, language skills, and knowledge about the world are acquired during interesting conversations with responsive adults. Talking about books, about daily happenings… not only contributes to children’s vocabularies, but also increases their ability to understand stories and explanations and their understanding of how things work—all skills that will be important in early reading.” —Starting Out Right, by the National Research Council, pp. 8-9.

Your Child at One and a Half

Your one-and-a-half-year-old may have a limited vocabulary understandable to family members only. Children at this age use mostly naming words (“Mommy,” “Daddy”) while continuing to babble and gesture to

supplement speech. Your child can understand many more words than she is able to say, however. By the first

spoken word, she can likely understand around 100 words.

At Home One-and-a-half-year-olds love to imitate and repeat!

• Sing the Morning Song (don't know it?;  check it out at play.kindermusik)  Model different animal sounds for your child and ask her to repeat them!

• Read and sing Animal Serenade, Old MacDonald, or other favorite animal book. Ask your child to name each animal. If she has trouble naming the animals, tell her the name and ask her to repeat it after you.

Your Child at Two

Your two-year-old likely knows a few dozen words and is beginning to put them together in short sentences. These sentences or phrases are usually not grammatically correct and only contain high-content words that demonstrate:

• Action (what happened)

• Possession (what belongs to whom)

• Location (where people and objects are)

• Recurrence (requesting “more” or “again”)

• Naming (familiar people, objects)

• Nonexistence (“all gone”)

Two-year-olds have entered the “word spurt” stage. Between two and five years old, children learn an average of six or seven new words each day. Wow! This is a terrific time to introduce new words to your child through reading and singing.