The Toddler's Eye View Walk
About fifty yards in twenty minutes: the slowest walk you'll take, and the richest.
The Toddler's Eye View Walk is a Montessori activity for a child aged 12 to 18 months. Area: Science and Nature. Time: 15-20 min.
What the activity builds
Explore the outdoors at their own pace and their own height, stopping wherever they choose.
The materials
- A very short, safe route: a quiet stretch of sidewalk or a yard
- Soft shoes, or bare feet if the ground has been checked
- Time, and no destination in mind
How to do it, step by step
- Go out without a stroller, and without a destination.
- Walk beside them, at their pace, without getting ahead.
- When they stop, stop too, and crouch down to their height.
- Look at what they're looking at, without rushing them or naming it right away.
- Head back at their signal, or before they get tired.
The parent's role
Show once, then step back. The only goal is that there's no goal. A child who spends ten minutes on a storm drain grate is doing real observation work. If you need to get somewhere, this isn't the activity for it, take the stroller and save the walk for another time.
Safety
Hold their hand near any traffic, and choose a spot with no direct access to the road or water. Watch what heads toward the mouth: cigarette butts, droppings, berries, small objects on the ground. Wash hands when you get back.
You remain the sole judge of what is right for your child. These activities are offered for educational and recreational purposes: they do not replace medical advice or the guidance of an early childhood professional.
Ways to adapt the activity
- Easier: a loop around the yard, or even the hallway of the building.
- Harder: varied ground, grass, gravel, a gentle slope.
- Extension: bring back one single find and set it in the nature basket.
Up next
More activities for a 12 to 18 months child.
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Dropping Balls into a Basket
Grabbing is easy, letting go at the right moment is its own whole skill to learn.
Nesting Cups
Three cups, three sizes: the smallest always ends up inside the biggest.
Turning Board Book Pages
A book is an object before it's a story, and a page turns with just two fingers.
The Ball Tube
The ball goes in at the top, disappears, and comes out below: pure mechanical magic.
Opening and Closing a Drawer
A low drawer, just for them, always holding the same thing inside.
Narrating Bath Time
Bath time becomes a vocabulary lesson, as long as you name what you're doing.
Naming What You See Through the Window
Nothing to prepare: the world goes by outside the glass, waiting to be named.
The Family Faces Album
Real photos of the people they love, in an album they can open themselves.
Peekaboo with a Scarf
A face disappears, a face comes back: the game that proves what leaves can return.
Filling and Emptying
The full bucket, the empty bucket, and the endless trip between the two.
In and Out
The object goes into the box, the object comes out of the box: the first idea of space.
The Fruit and Vegetable Basket
Real fruit, heavy and fragrant, to weigh in the hand long before it's eaten.