Teacher-Child Ratios
Young children usually spend their entire day with the same teacher, child-care provider, or small team of teachers, and early childhood educators usually plan for and implement all components of the curriculum. Typically, however, the teacher-child ratio, or the number of children each individual adult is responsible for, increases by age, because we know that owing to their physical needs and language capacities, infants and toddlers require more hands-on attention than do preschoolers, kindergarteners, and children in early elementary grades (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009). Therefore curriculum for infants and toddlers will emphasize one-on-one interactions between the adult and child, while curriculum for preschoolers and older children includes an increasing number of activities for small groups of children and sometimes a larger group.