Hi Luisa,
Before this discussion moves into specifics, I think there are a few general ideas that should be addressed with regards to "teaching" babies to toddlers.
1) Understand
why you are teaching children that young. Sounds basic, but many teachers now filling the demand to teach young learners don't really have much of an idea of what the benefits of teaching young learners are. That can lead to a lot of frustration, for teachers, for parents, and unfortunately for the kids.
You often hear people say that kids "soak things up like sponges", and there is obviously truth to that. But the primary benefits of learning other languages while young are phonemic and affective...it's not really about building a huge vocabulary or collection of conversational gambits.
Very young learners are still very receptive to the disctinctive sounds of foreign languages. As we grow older, that receptiveness progressively fades making it more and more difficult to hear and pronounce the sounds of foreign languages with native-like proficiency. Language classes for young ones
can (with enough exposure) help children make and keep neural connections that will allow them to develop advanced listening and speaking proficiency in the foreign language, and many people argue that those neural connections will remain to some degree even if the child stops learning the language, say, at 4 years old but picks it up again as an older child. That phonemic awareness will not just help the child be a better listener with nicer pronunciation, it's going to help them be a better reader, it's going to allow them to increase the amount of exposure they get to the language, it's going to help them in a lot of ways.
As for the affective part, these classes, perhaps the child's first experience in any kind of formal or informal learning-specific environment, can greatly shape their attitudes toward learning in general and specifically towards learning a second language. At my school, where children can begin classes with a parent from the age of 2, we really see that for the children who begin early, English is just kind of no big deal...it's something that they've done since they began talking in their native tongue or soon thereafter, whereas for many of the children who begin studying from a later age like 5 or older, English is something kind of intimidating...a school subject...something to be learned...something to be a little nervous about.
So, for me, those are 2 important considerations that kind of serve as the backbone for how I come about planning "lessons" for toddlers.
Make sure there is a lot of exposure to the spoken language through song, stories, and simply talking about what you are doing, using a lot of repetition, and make sure that above all else your classes are fun and stimulating.
You can also make the case that very young learners are able to internalize the foreign grammar naturally in a way that older learners can't, and I believe that to be true, but it doesn't affect my planning really other than to reinforce the obvious that there should be no formal grammar instruction at this age.
2) Relating to the affective role of early language education, plan your lessons around activities that will appeal to those particular age groups (and there is a huge difference of course between one and two and three year olds), and then figure out what "language" you may want to target in those lessons, if anything specific. This is in contrast to how you might approach a course with adults or older children, where the language focus is decided first and activities planned around that. You can't think that way with very young learners. Gather a wide selection of fun, stimulating activities (making sure you have many lined up when class time comes around) and then start thinking about how you can give those activities more of a language focus.
3) Involve the parents as much as possible. If the parents are in class with you like a Mommy and Me class, GREAT. Understand that your role as teacher is as much teaching the parents how to play in English with the kids as it teaching the kids themselves. If the parents are not in class as in a pre-school/daycare setting, make sure you are communicating with them directly (with occasional meetings/workshops) and indirectly (through newsletters/e-mail/updates on a website or even easier...a blog, etc.) to give them ideas for making this a joint venture. If you have parents sending kids to you once or twice a week and then not being involved in their kid's English education beyond that, you simply are not likely to see tremendous progress from that child. You'll see progress, but nothing that couldn't have been gained had the child waited a few years to start English. But when the parents are involved and English is an at home activity as well, you can see amazing progress.
4) If you are talking 1-3 year old students, there should be absolutely no pressure to speak the language. This may or may not seem like common sense, but it's important for you and for the parents especially to understand that. Aside from the obvious, that children under 3 are not speaking much in their native tongue (well, kind of really takes off in the 2s), you really run the risk of creating negative associations with the language when pressure young children to speak before they are ready.
Again, it seems kind of obvious, but when you formalize education like this, there are pressures that we need to acknowledge. The parents are paying for lessons, so teachers can often feel like they need to get the kids speaking ASAP to justify collecting tuition. And parents can often feel pressure to get the kids speaking to look good in front of the other parents and kids, to justify to their husband or wife at home paying for the lessons, or simply because they think that's the best way to learn.
You or your school need to communicate clearly with the parents about your thoughts on this issue. If you are doing Parent/child classes, your going to have some parents nudging their kids to repeat whatever the teacher says...you need to be prepared for that and prepared to talk with the parent to help them understand the importance of a pressure-free environment.
Wow...I've gone on way too long. Anyhow, I look forward to checking in on this thread and sharing ideas. Best of luck.
www.simplesongs.blogs.com
but we just had a new teach come in...she liked my puppet idea, but she's not a pink bunny and things just weren't working for her. she has a deeper voice than i do and it was really straining her voice to get the high-pitched voice of the bunny. then one day i was in her classroom i saw a really cool plush dinosaur. i picked it up and said "oh my god! this is a puppet!" she was so excited and said "wow! this is the one! this is the one!" it was a perfect match for her.