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Teachable Moments
Encouraging Little Minds and Helping Them Learn By Melinda Copp
Provide a Safe Place to ExploreToddlers are all about exploring and figuring things out, and they love hands-on experiments. So when your toddler is throwing a book at the dog, rearranging the kitchen chairs or tipping over a toy box, they aren't doing it for the sake of destruction; they are figuring out how the world works. And all this learning, exploring and experimenting primes them for school and education later in life.
"It's important to provide them with interesting materials to play with and manipulate," Kostelc says. "And not just toys, but safe, everyday items as well."
Manipulating a variety of objects is especially important for kids under 2 because having experience with different shapes, colors and textures will make your child familiar with their characteristics. For example, 
handling a ball, rolling it across the floor and throwing it on the ground will give your child a working knowledge of how a ball works. Toddlers will learn to recognize that they can roll a ball, as opposed to a block that they can't get to roll even if they throw it, which are all fundamentals of basic shapes.