Infant Curriculum
This stage (Birth – 18 months) is characterized by rapid growth and development, need for love and comfort, as infants from birth begin to develop a relationship with close people around them as they seek to build trust and secure attachment. Learning to communicate, interact with objects and persons takes several years.
Key Developmental Domains
Social-emotional Development
Attachment Building: Children bond with the primary caregiver
Self-Recognition: Able to respond to own name and can recognize self in a mirror
Emotional Expression: Can express different clear feelings of happiness, discomfort, pain, fear
Separation Anxiety: Shows fear of unfamiliar people and new situations
Affection: Recognize and responds affectionately to familiar people and responds to signs of love and affection with open arms and or a smile
Self-regulation: Can comfort self by sucking a finger or holding a special cuddly toy
Peer Relationship: Enjoy looking at other babies
Imitation: Can imitate actions of others such as waving, smiling
Physical Development
Partial Body Movement: Children can move parts of the body by rolling in both directions, turning head, reaching, and grasping objects
Full Body Movement: Children can move the whole body as they crawl, stand, walk, run, kick.
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Children can walk holding onto objects, surfaces, and human support
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Children can walk by themselves without support
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Children can climb few steps with adult support
Finger Motor: Children can hold a cup with both hands to drink
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They can reach and grab objects
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They can drop and pick up toys and can transfer an item from one hand to the other.
Language & Communication
Speaking: Children babble with inflection, imitate, repeat words, syllables, and sequence of sounds. They can say several words (‘Mama,’ dada,’ ‘bye bye’).
Nonverbal Communication: Children can imitate sounds and gestures
Comprehension: Children understand the meaning of simple words and instructions such as ‘come,’ ‘no,’ ‘give it to me’
Sounds Exploration: Children enjoy story reading, songs and can sing along.
Cognitive Development
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Human Recognition: Children recognize familiar faces and respond with affection
Object Exploration: Shows interest in objects and human faces and explore them with mouth, eyes, hands, ears, and nose
Object Search: Children look for hidden things and objects
Object Permanence: Children begin to understand that the object is still there when it is hidden
Simple Commands: Children do pay attention to simple commands such as ‘no,’ ‘yes,’ ‘give it to me.’
Imitation: They imitate the gestures and actions of others and objects. They enjoy playing and emulating games such as peek-a-boo
Story Awareness: They enjoy looking at picture books
Filling and Emptying: Children can put things in and out of containers with large opening