By the time your child turns 2 years, he/she has the potential to meet the following learning outcomes.
Literacy
- Learn to read about 500 First and Basic words
- Express themselves through simple statements
Numeracy
- Recognize numbers up to 50, in sequence and in random order
- Understand one digit numbers
Your Child’s Developmental Milestones between 18 months and 2 years
-
Your child’s memory is improving every day
When a child turns 18 months, their ability to retain and file away information for future use meets a peak. When they encounter an object they recognize, they will start to recall what it is called. For example, when they see a yellow ball they can either say “yellow” or “ball”.
This is also when they start to relate what they see or hear to a memory. For example, if they see the cabinet in the kitchen where they know the cookies are kept, they will likely ask for a cookie whenever they see it. Or when they are asked to put away their shoes, they will know which cupboard to place it in.
-
Your child is curious and wants to learn more
The natural result of their improving memory ability and capacity is the growing need to associate every foreign object they see with a label or a name. Whether they ask after new items they see, or if you as a parent volunteer the information first does not matter. What matters is that their ability to recall such labels increases exponentially at this age.
-
Your child can easily pick up 10 to 20 words
With their improving ability to retain information, it is no surprise that children can easily pick up 10 to 20 words during this age. It is during this time that their “imitation game” is very strong as well. They are likely to echo after what they hear.
They may have never seen those words they speak before, but in the midst of their babbling, it is not difficult to hear children clearly say words like “bye bye”, “mama”, “papa” or “milk”, just to name a few.
- Your child has limited vocabulary
Still, children usually only have limited vocabulary at this age. They start to say “want cookie” to express that they would like a cookie, or “toilet, toilet” to say that they would like to go to the toilet.
Even then, children between 18 months to 2 years often can understand way more than what they can express with words. They are always listening and looking for opportunities to mimic. Hence, in order to express their emotions and ideas, they will use their body language, and tone so that they can convey what they want.
The Stamford Difference for children between 18 months and 2 years
Instead of relying on Traditional Education and its accompanying methods that are no longer effective nor beneficial, Stamford will instead focus on what New Education can bring for children. That is, other than laying their foundation in literacy and numeracy, we will also develop their abilities and skills.
-
Improving your child’s memory with Whole Brain Training
As your child’s memory begins to develop faster than before from 18 months, at Stamford, we will focus on a child’s memory abilities. Through a variety of activities, games and challenges in class, there are different areas of Whole Brain Training focus from week to week. Picture memory this week, spatial memory the next, just to name a couple.
-
Your child’s concentration ability with Whole Brain Training
As children are naturally curious at this age, it is even harder for them to focus their energy on one activity at a time. Instead, they will keep being stimulated by what is going on around them.
In addition to training a child’s memory abilities, Whole Brain Training have specific focuses to improve a child’s concentration abilities. In fact, increasing a child’s ability to concentrate and for longer periods of time is one of the first areas of training at Stamford.
-
Recognition of letters, letter sounds and words
Children at this age are capable of picking up words and phrases in a piecemeal fashion as their ability to retain information begins to peak. However, at Stamford we realize that with our New Method of introducing letter names and letter sounds in a systematic fashion, children can actually develop a better literacy foundation at an earlier age.
With Stamford Phonics – First Reading and Stamford First Sight Reading modules, children between 18 months to 2 years can start reading up to 500 First Words.
-
Recognition of numbers
Again, as children this age are able to retain a lot of information, rote counting (e.g. counting upwards) from 1 to 10 can be achieved by most. To maximise their memory abilities at this age, Stamford’s Numeracy Method allows children to not just rote count, but also recognize numbers from 1 to 50.