Infant Program
Program Times for Infants
9:00 AM -12:00 PM
Extended Care Times for Infants
(7:00 am -9:00 am) ( 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm or 12:00 pm-3:00 pm )
The infant program at TLC Montessori is designed to lay the foundation for social, emotional, motor, and cognitive development. The infant room creates a safe and comfortable environment that maximizes early learning opportunities. The skills that are developed in the infant room allow for a smooth transition into the toddler program.
- Learning and Cognitive Development Children are supported and encouraged to demonstrate initiative, curiosity, and imagination by identifying sources of sound, following objects visually, and responding to a variety of objects and faces.
- Children are encouraged to demonstrate reasoning, problem solving, and persistence by using the senses to engage in play, reaching for and grasping objects, and imitating actions, sounds, and words.
Communication and Early Literacy
- Children are supported in developing and expanding their listening and understanding skills by showing sensitivity to noise levels, seeking to identify sources of sounds, listening to sounds in the environment, responding to human voices, and recognizing their names.
- Children will receive support when engaging in non-verbal communication by smiling, shaking their heads, pointing, and gesturing with the use of basic sign language.
- Children are encouraged to engage in verbal communication by varying their pitch, making “comfort” noises like cooing, creating single consonant and vowel sounds, babbling, and expressing basic sounds or words for a variety of objects.
Creative Expression
- Children are encouraged to respond to a variety of art forms by expressing interest in pictures and objects in a variety of shapes, colors, patterns, and textures.
- Children are encouraged to respond to music. The children are exposed to a variety of musical genres like classical, jazz, and children’s songs. Children will also be exposed to soothing nature sounds like ocean waves, rain, and singing birds.
Physical and Motor Development
- Children are supported in developing motor coordination by learning to move their limbs voluntarily, turning their heads from side to side, learning to sit without support, learning to roll from stomach to back and vice-versa, and learning to crawl, stand, and walk.
- Children are encouraged to develop fine motor control by learning to grasp objects with the palmer and pincer grasp, learning to transfer objects from hand to hand, clapping, manipulating small toys, and beginning to spoon-feed independently.
Social, Emotional, and Personal Development
- Children are supported in developing their emotional expressions by imitating the facial expressions of adults and peers, showing a preference for certain activities, and responding differentially to people.
- Children will be encouraged to develop pro-social behavior and positive social interaction skills by showing an awareness of other children, imitating the behavior of peers, and responding to the actions of peers.
- Children are supported in developing self-regulation, self-control, and self-help skills by beginning to independently regulate their own sleep and activity schedules, learning to soothe and feed themselves.
- Children are encouraged to demonstrate dyadic synchrony and reciprocity in interactions with adults by maintaining eye contact with adults during feeding times, accepting comforting behaviors from adults, showing preference for parents and primary caregivers, and finding enjoyment in imitating adult behaviors.