What does/did your 1 year old 'do' in daycare?

Shaina

I am asking b/c my girls are almost 1 and we are hiring a new nanny and want to give her ideas/suggestions right off the bat on what kind of activities/stimulation we want her to give them during the day.  Obviously, we are hoping the new nanny has some experience with this but I'd love to hear what kind of day daycares put together for 1 year old.

We have a playroom set up for them and they have tons of age appropriate toys.  Plus we have a CD player in there with tons of CD's of nursery rhymes/children's songs.  We have books and will suggest she read a few to them a day.

Thanks so much in advance.  The nanny we have now but who will be leaving by the end of August was GREAT with newborns but she sucks with kids this age.  Not really interactive and pretty lazy.

14years

Most of the day, DS plays with the other kids.  They have a structured "art" project maybe twice a week, where they do finger painting on paper.  The painted shirts once for all the kids to wear.  They also made a big wall painting once.  They do this thing they call "water play" where the teacher fills up a big buckets and lets the kids pull toys out of it.  They see the cause and effect of wet/dry and use their motor skills and share.  Plus they have a blast doing that.  They have story time once a day.  They take buggy rides outside and play in this little infant maze.  Basically, all stuff a one-year old would do at home.

blondie75

All sorts of things - when the weather is nice they play outside, when it's not nice, they play in atrium which functions as the indoor playzone.  They read, sing and dance.  They usually do 2 or 3 art projects a week-sometimes it's just finger painting.   They do various activities - like sensory or cause and effect.  They play with the other kids in their room or in the other infant room.

 

azuremama

They sing songs and sometimes do crafts (although I wonder how much they're actually doing at this point, especially because DS is way not into it).  They do "dramatic play" that I guess means dress up.  They've got different big toys that they pull out once a week or so--there's an indoor slide and a water table that they use outside.  They also go outside to a playground 2x a day when it's nice.  Most of it is just free play, though.

katy75

On a daily basis... they have free play time, circle time where they sit in a circle and play with instruments or sing motion songs and stuff like that, art work (paint, color, paste odd things to paper), playground twice a day weather permitting, story time.

This summer, Friday is water day.  I send an extra outfit and towel and they spend part of the morning doing something water related (I think they have a table of water).

They played "ice hockey" over the winter.  The teachers made ice cube circles about 6 inches in diameter and the pushed them around on the table.

They have different activity sections in the room - one is a sensory table that they change the stuff in fairly frequently, some kind of music station, book station, math (numbers/counting) station...  things like that they can wander too or be directed to if they do that.

The teacher blows bubbles and they chase them around and try to catch them.

They do so much more, I'm trying to think of it all now.