Infant Class

Each child needs to develop a sense of autonomy, the sense of being a separate, independent self, that comes from being treated as an important individual and being allowed increasing opportunities for freedom.

The child's first three years are critical for the development of the brain and language. During this period, the child’s life experience plays a fundamental role in the hard wiring of the brain, laying the foundation for all intellectual and emotional development to follow. From birth, babies are marvelous learners, immediately investigating the sights, sounds, and feel of the world. The World at Their Fingertips provides infants and toddlers with what they need: a safe world rich with opportunities to actively explore and enjoy: to see, hear, feel, touch, and move. They need a world filled with responsive interactions and language: many conversations with others, books (for even the youngest babies), songs, and lots of listening and responding to their vocalizations and words.

Our program includes:

• Personal Care Plans: Parents and the primary caregiver establish a personal care plan that is continually updated to ensure that care routines are prime times that fit the child and family.
• Snuggles Care: Very young babies spend ample time each day heart-to-heart with their primary caregiver. Every sound and movement of the baby is met with a warm response: a word, a smile, a touch that signals, "You are special."
• Let's Read: Long before they understand the words and pictures, infants benefit from the joy of sharing a book in the arms of a caring adult. Reading begins with young babies and gains momentum as the children mature. On laps, on the floor, and as they drift off to sleep, infants and toddlers experience the magic and wonder of books.
• My Place to Grow: Infants are sensory-motor beings. They explore the world with their senses and their developing motor skills. Long before they understand a concept like "under" or "far" with their minds, their bodies learn to navigate the up and down, over and under of the physical world. The World at Their Fingertips provides infants with a rich learning environment with appropriate learning centers planned and organized to maximize:
  • Large and Small Motor Experiences: For younger babies: reaching, grasping, kicking, holding, pulling and standing, creeping and crawling in, out, over, under.
  • Sensory Experiences: Explorations of texture, color, patterns, size and shape, smell, taste, weight.
  • Cognitive Experiences: Object permanence, spatial relationships, classifying, collecting and dumping, cause and effect experiences, problem solving. Language and Music: Adult-child conversations, reading and language play, explorations in music, rhyming, and sound.
  • Personal Expression: Art, movement, imitation and beginning dramatic play, doll and stuffed-animal play.
• Parents' Prime Time: Teachers understand that the parent-child relationship is primary. Parents are encouraged to call or drop by any time with ideas, questions, or concerns.

What Infants Learn:

The program is designed for optimum comprehensive individual development at the child's natural pace. Caring and learning are inseparable. In the program, children optimize their emerging physical, sensory-motor, perceptual, cognitive, and social skills.