In noticing that many of the older children seem ready for more challenging manipulatives and building materials, we offered the marble tracks to small groups of older toddlers this week. The children responded to these new materials with great excitement and curiosity! Many children became quite fixated on keeping track of the exact marble which they first chose, and this led to some conflicts at first. We were impressed, however, by how quickly the children began to let go of this need to retrieve the same marble each time, in lieu of simply finding another one. It’s exciting to see the older toddlers starting to move beyond the “everything is mine” mindset. This willingness to adjust one’s tactics mid-game in response to the needs of the group play scenario–what an important discovery!
