Infant Room Lesson Plans
Lesson plans for your infant classroom may not be traditional in comparison to other age groups, but they're important all the same. Deborah Stewart provides simple guidelines to follow when planning out classroom activities and exercises.
Suggested Developmental Disciplines to Consider:
- Physical - Including fine and gross motor development.
- Social - Awareness of and interaction with others.
- Cognitive - Ability to understand and order the world.
- Emotional - Including self-confidence and self-awareness.
When planning lessons for your infant classroom, first take inventory of the developmental stages of your students, then adapt these individual developmental disciplines to meet their needs. Look for opportunities to repeat planned activities because more exposure will reinforce important concepts and ideas. Once you've found a 'groove', regularly evaluate your lesson plans to decide what's working, what needs updated (i.e. adjusted to meet growth and development objectives), and what needs to be scrapped altogether.
Remember that the suggested developmental disciplines aren't the 'be all, end all'. Include other areas for exploration (e.g. sensory play, music, etc.). Additionally, while your students will respond to directed 'learning', they also need unscheduled moments with which to explore independently. Finally, place priority on your students' schedules (feeding, diaper changing, sleeping, etc.), planning teachable moments around these activities and not the other way around.
For a lesson planning template, be sure to check out Stewart's full post!
Lesson plans for the infant room
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