We do not do the clean break
You will be told, by other schools and by relatives, that the kindest thing is to hand the child over and walk away quickly. We do not agree, and we have thirteen years of first mornings behind that.
A Headway toddler starts with a week of short mornings with a parent in the room. In week two the parent moves to the veranda, still visible. By week three most children have stopped checking. Some take until week six, and that is a fact about the child, not a failure by anybody.
The point of the Toddler stage is not to teach a two-year-old anything in particular. It is to establish that this room is safe, that the adults in it keep their promises, and that when you put a thing back on the shelf it is still there tomorrow. Everything the school does afterwards rests on that.
A Toddler morning
- 8.00 — Arrival at the gate. Shoes off, own peg, own name.
- 8.15 — Play and practical life. Pouring, carrying, tidying, and water across a room without spilling it.
- 9.30 — Snack, laid and cleared by the children.
- 9.50 — The garden. Digging, water, and running as fast as they like.
- 10.35 — Circle: songs, a story, and the day’s news.
- 11.00 — Home, with something they made.
It is not playing. Ask them.
A two-year-old carrying a jug of water across a room with total concentration is not passing time. They are building the hand, the eye and the will — in that order.
Practical life
Pouring, spooning, sweeping, dressing frames. Real tools, real water, real breakable jugs — because a child who is trusted with glass behaves differently towards it.
The senses
Sorting by colour, size and texture. Materials that isolate one quality at a time, so a small child can order the world before they have words for it.
Early language
Songs, rhymes, stories and naming, in English all morning. Most toddlers arrive with none and are following simple instructions in it by March.
Toddler, honestly.
Almost certainly not, and it is the most common question we get. Nearly every child cries at the gate for some part of the first month. What matters is what happens ninety seconds later — and we will tell you honestly, every day, what that was.
If a child is still genuinely distressed at week eight, that is a real signal and we will sit down with you about it. Sometimes the answer is that two and a half was simply too early, and coming back next term is the kindest thing for everybody.
Some will, incidentally, and we will not stop them. But we do not teach them at this stage and we would ask you not to at home either.
The hand that can hold a pencil is built by pouring and squeezing and picking things up with three fingers, not by tracing letters at two. Children who do the physical work first write more easily at four, not less.
Most of our Toddler families do, and yes. At two and a half a child is not translating — they are simply acquiring a second set of sounds for things, which is the easiest it will ever be.
Our Toddler staff all speak Sinhala and use it when a child needs comforting. Nobody is left stranded for the sake of a language policy.
Playgroup
At three the work turns outward: sharing a space, waiting for a turn, and the first real friendships — days noisy with early language and spilled paint.
