Infant curriculum ideas: Young Infants – www.lessons4learners.com

Young Infants – www.lessons4learners.com

Young Infant Lesson Plans by Season

Be sure to check out our complete list of lesson plan themes.

Note: Please provide appropriate supervision to the children in your care when completing all activities. You will need to decide what types of activities are safe for the children in your care. Appropriate and reasonable caution should be used when providing art and sensory experiences for children.

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Infant Teacher Role

​The earliest years are all about relationships. Infants and toddlers crave and develop attachments to the special people in their lives.
​Depending on how parents, early childhood educators, and others treat them, babies also develop expectations about people and themselves.

• Young infants (0 to 9 months) seek security.
• Mobile infants (8 to 18 months) are eager to explore.
• Toddlers (16 to 36 months) are working on their identity; they want to know who they are and who’s in charge.

Online Courses for Early Childhood Educators

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Lesson Plans for Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers

A developmentally appropriate curriculum is a cornerstone of any great early learning program. Your curriculum puts your philosophy into practice and showcases the intent and skill your teachers bring to their work. 

A quick internet search will yield various free resources and ideas for curriculum and lesson planning. Some of these tools might be great, while others might be mediocre or misguided. Unfortunately, many off-shelf curriculum products are not financially feasible, and it’s unlikely that a mass-produced lesson plan will apply to all classrooms. 

Instead, you’ll need to focus on building out a lesson plan that best fits your classroom values and your children’s capabilities. In this guide, we’ll share a few tips to remember when building lesson plans for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers to meet their individual needs and set them up for developmental success.

Make learning the foundation

You should always relate high-quality lesson plans to specific learning goals, so it’s best to use lessons that detail what, why, and how children will learn.  

Your lesson plans should outline daily lessons, activities, and goals with a focus on: 

• Key learning objectives
• Necessary and available resources
• Method of introducing new lessons and concepts
• Assessment of outcomes and comprehension
• Engagement

Here are a few ways to ensure you’re building a curriculum that supports learning and growth:

Consult your state’s early learning framework

Before building out your lesson plan, it’s a good idea to consult your state’s early learning framework. This framework is a roadmap of the skills and knowledge children should develop throughout their time in childcare and preschool. 

While each state’s framework varies, each organizes lessons by learning domain and age group, then grows more complex as children approach kindergarten. For an example of a nationally-recognized framework, check out this neat interactive tool from Headstart.

Your state’s early learning framework is one of the places you can source the “why” and the “what” behind your curriculum planning. Your lesson plans should cover all aspects of a child’s development and connect to your age group’s developmentally appropriate learning goals. 

You’ll also want to familiarize yourself with your local early learning framework to ensure your children prepare for the next step, whether preschool, kindergarten or another track. 

Choose your developmental assessment

Ongoing child assessment has many benefits for both educators and children. First, it provides a complete picture of each child’s developmental stage so you can meet them where they are. It also provides feedback on your lesson plans so you can accurately address the needs of your class. 

Finally, a child assessment is a helpful resource you can share with parents to keep them updated on their child’s progress and how they can continue learning at home. Parents want to ensure their children are on track, and a comprehensive assessment is a great way to keep them informed.  

Similar to your state’s early learning framework, your developmental assessment outlines the different skills you should support in your children’s development. While you could decide to use your state’s framework as part of your observation and assessment, it might be simpler to pull your learning goals from a developmental assessment tool (such as the DRDP) instead. 

Ultimately, you’ll want to establish your framework for early learning so your curriculum can best support your children’s development. Choose the system that works best for you and your children—you know them best! 

Tips for writing lesson plans 

When planning your curriculum, you might ask yourself where to begin. You might be unsure of how many lessons to plan or if you need to include something just because it is popular or in season. 

While planning tends to be a very personal process, it can be helpful to have some guidelines for how to get started. So here’s an essential piece of lesson planning advice: start with your children and your community and what’s most exciting and relevant to them.  

There’s no limit to what you could explore in your classroom, so narrow your options down by focusing on what your children are currently interested in. 

If it’s the beginning of the year and you’re not sure what your children like yet, start with the standard “About Me” unit! This unit helps you to get to know your children while also helping them feel comfortable. Throughout that unit, you’ll learn what topics your children are interested in so you can dive in more deeply in the future.

Source

Another lesson planning tip is to use the skills and milestones outlined in your early learning framework when searching for activity ideas. For example, a quick internet search of “one-to-one correspondence activities for preschool” will provide a range of ideas. Use your best judgment to pick lessons you think will work well in your classroom.

Infant lesson plans

Your infant lesson plans will be the most individualized and grounded in developmental milestones compared to the curriculum for other age groups. Infants develop so rapidly that age differences of only a few weeks can translate into very different developmental goals. For example, an infant just working on rolling over will have other goals than an infant who is getting ready to crawl. 

Don’t panic—you don’t need to write an entirely different lesson plan for each infant every week! Instead, think about lesson plans that apply to the whole group with a small section dedicated to each infant’s individual development. 

For example, you can pick 1-3 developmental milestones for each infant to work on that week and plan related activities to support those goals. You’re likely already thinking about your infants’ developmental progress—document these details and share them with parents so they’re more connected with their infants’ progress.

Parents of infants will likely look to their teachers and care providers to be trusted experts on how their little one is developing. So the better you can speak to their infants’ current and upcoming milestones, the more at ease parents will feel.

Toddler lesson plans

When writing lesson plans for toddlers, prioritize flexibility. For example, toddlers may be happy doing the same activity repeatedly one day, only to tire of three different activities in a row the next day. 

Use your lesson plans to capture the broad ideas of what you’re exploring together while leaving room for toddlers to take the curriculum in their direction. If it sounds like you need to have an infinite number of lesson plans, remember that your toddlers will also want repetition, so you may only need to plan two to three new activities for the week. You can repeat and adapt these activities daily (for example, by adding new materials). You’ll know when your toddlers lose interest, and it’s time to introduce something new. 

Source

Preschool lesson plans

Preschool lesson plans will most reflect your philosophy on early education. While play-based learning is one of the most common approaches, there is a broad spectrum of what that means in practice and how you represent it in a lesson plan.

Create lesson plans showing that you have a plan for the day and the week. Map out the specifics for each part of the day: morning meeting/circle time, small group time, independent playtime, outdoor play, and so on. Including as much detail in your lesson plans shows intention.

Of course, things don’t always go according to plan in a preschool classroom, so responding with flexibility and creativity is a must. 

Evaluate your lesson plan

As an educator, it’s always a good idea to find ways to improve your instruction, curriculum, and skills. Evaluating your lesson plan helps you find new ways to improve your activities, instruction, materials, and the overall plan itself. 

During your evaluation, identify any challenges you or your children faced regarding your instruction and their comprehension and engagement.

For many educators, our best ideas are spur-of-the-moment and often inspired by the children. For this reason, it’s essential to ensure parents know your lesson plans operate as a guide and aren’t set in stone.  

Present your curriculum as living, breathing, and changing lesson plans while updating parents on what happens in the classroom daily. This will allow you to be an effective teacher for your preschoolers and an educator who parents can trust.

Bring curriculum visibility to families

You can meaningfully engage families by bringing visibility to what the children are learning daily. Share your weekly lesson plan and daily activities with families to partner and build strong home-to-school connections. With access to the weekly lesson plan, families will be better equipped to support their children’s development at home.  

Download a free copy of our preschool daily report template to keep families up-to-date on their child’s day and share extension activities to try at home. 

Key takeaways

The goal of any curriculum plan is to outline how your children will develop the skills they need to be successful learners today and moving forward. As you continue to build and adapt your lesson plans, you’ll ensure your children receive a well-rounded education that supports each developmental stage.

Brightwheel is the complete solution for early education providers, enabling you to streamline your center’s operations and build a stand-out reputation. Brightwheel connects the most critical aspects of running your center—including sign in and out, parent communications, tuition billing, and licensing and compliance—in one easy-to-use tool, along with providing best-in-class customer support and coaching. Brightwheel is trusted by thousands of early education centers and millions of parents. Learn more at mybrightwheel.com.

Principles of the Inspiration Program

Describe the 12 core principles in detail

1. The principle of supporting childhood diversity

The Inspiration program takes into account the uniqueness of each child and focuses on individualization and the diversity of educational trajectories.

The Inspiration program provides equal opportunities for both gifted and developmentally disabled children (inclusion), recognizes and takes into account a wide range of prerequisites for children’s development, diversity in abilities and development pace.

The “Inspiration” program requires all participants in the pedagogical process to show attention and sensitivity to the individual inclinations, interests, opportunities and needs of each child, readiness to support children with different developmental prerequisites through individualization and differentiation of education.

For the successful implementation of the Inspiration Program, the age composition of the groups is of no fundamental importance. It is equally effective both in the same age and in different age groups; in groups of typically developing children and in inclusive groups, as well as in mixed groups of children with typical development and children with developmental disabilities.

However, general practice shows that the composition of the group of different ages is preferable, since it is more consistent with the structure of society and the social development of the child.

The method of completing groups depends on the preschool organization – traditions, readiness to work in conditions that are more difficult for adults, but more comfortable for children. The Inspiration program provides for the possibility of flexible organization of educational work, including on the basis of open shift groups that unite children of different ages according to their interests. This organizational form has a number of advantages in terms of the possibilities of implementing individual developmental trajectories of children.

2. The principle of continuity with primary general education

Education during the first ten years of life is successful and effective if the preschool and primary levels of education are built in succession and follow the same general philosophical and didactic principles.

At the same time, “continuity from above”, with attempts to bring all children to a single level of development by transferring school classes to kindergarten, is unacceptable. The forms and content of school education should not be transferred to the preschool level.

Continuity should be built from below, in steps. It is best to start building “continuity from below” from the earliest stages of education.

When implementing the Inspiration Program, it is recommended to build cooperation and continuity between the levels of preschool education and primary school based on the socioconstructivist model of education. At the same time, it is necessary to maintain a balance between the playful, cognitive, research and other forms of activity of the child himself and the activity of an adult who supports and enriches the child’s experience.

3. Principles of promotion, cooperation and participation

Overcoming the paradigm of transferring knowledge and experience from an adult to a child, the Inspiration Program promotes the idea of ​​a child’s full participation in the educational process.

The principle of participation of the child in the discussion of issues related to his education and decision-making is enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child (Articles 12 and 13).

The child acquires his own experience, masters and comprehends the world, actively building knowledge on the basis of previous experience in independent and “joint-shared” activities in communication with other children and adults, becoming a full-fledged participant in the educational process.

The principle of assistance and cooperation is a specific expression of the socioconstructivist approach in education and is implemented as a through principle for organizing educational activities under the Inspiration Program, as well as in the form of the Children’s Council and Magic Circle methods used within the Program.

4. The principle of enrichment (amplification) of development through the support of children’s initiative and interests

Children diligently, patiently and persistently engage in any activity if it is interesting to them. Experience shows that children experience joy and emotional upsurge when they are allowed to play freely, experiment, express their hypotheses and ideas, and express themselves in various activities. Joy and a positive emotional background help to strengthen self-confidence and perseverance in achieving learning goals. Later, this will bear fruit in motivated and creative work within the framework of schooling.

In order to support the interests of children, the “Inspiration” program offers flexible planning of the educational process, aimed at balancing the child’s own (research, search, play, etc.) activity and the activity of an adult, enriching the child’s experience and supporting his efforts to master the world and realize his own potential .

The program provides:

• self-determination and participation of children in shaping the content of the work: the content of more than half of all classes is initiated by the children themselves; children do what they like, adults support children’s initiative;

• maintaining the right balance between group activities and independent activities of children with the inclusion of free play;

• respectful and attentive attitude of teachers to children, a positive response to their behavior, taking into account children’s needs and interests and building proposals in accordance with them;

• allocation of more than half of the time for independent children’s activities with the inclusion of free play.

5. Principle of emotional well-being

The decisive condition for successful development and the most important characteristic of the interaction between children and adults is the emotional atmosphere in which the educational process takes place.

The conscious building of an atmosphere of trust and emotional comfort is an important area of ​​pedagogical activity under the Inspiration Program.

Particular attention on the part of educators during the transition of a child from a family to a preschool organization and in daily work should be directed to the formation of a relationship of attachment of the child to the teacher. Sustained attachment creates the preconditions for a child to develop a sense of security, which is essential for his emotional well-being.

The “Inspiration” program offers a scientifically based and practically tested method for the transition of a child from a family to a kindergarten, which provides psychological adaptation and strengthens the child’s ability to overcome stress and stress.

6. The principle of adequacy to the capabilities of the child

Setting goals, helping and supporting an adult, the proposed forms of activity, should be adequate to the age capabilities of the child and proceed in the “zone of proximal development”. When offering new educational ideas and incentives, adults should build on the child’s existing knowledge, understanding, desires, characteristics, preferences, and interests. An adult must listen and hear the child before giving him this or that answer or stimulus (motivation).

The Inspiration program offers a scientifically based and practically tested method of pedagogical diagnostics of the current level of a child’s development and supporting communication in the zone of proximal development, methods of pedagogical observations in the form of a portfolio and other forms.

7. The principle of learning on the example of adult behavior

Children are especially sensitive to the behavior of adults and tend to imitate them. Imitation has shown itself to be an effective methodological means of indirectly motivating children to work.

Adult activities, such as preparing breakfast, knitting, assembling structures, cleaning, attract the attention of the child and involve him in the process.

In joint activities with adults, children learn many useful and important skills, expanding their horizons and knowledge about the world. Joint problem solving and the resulting social exchange provide an ideal environment for development. Unobtrusive teaching by example does not suppress children’s activity and preserves their freedom to choose the content of their classes.

8. Principle of recognition of the right to make a mistake

When implementing the Inspiration Program, each child is given the right to use experience and information in their own way, to consider and assimilate it individually, from the standpoint of their own experience. Educators allow children to do something “wrong”, to try, make mistakes, find and correct mistakes.

The Inspiration program recognizes and asserts for every child the right to know and not to know, to be able and not to be able, to want and not to want. There are no big ones and no small ones. There are no those who have reached and have not reached some external norm. Everyone has their own strengths and their own challenges, their own priorities and needs.

The supportive communication methods offered to educators through the Inspiration Program allow mistakes to be used as a source of valuable experience and learning.

9. The principle of supporting the game in all its types and forms

The game is a form of mastering the world and development, a form of learning, specific for children of early and preschool age. In the game, the child acquires and processes knowledge about the world, develops abilities, learns to solve problems, establishes social relationships and builds imaginary worlds.

The Inspiration program offers methodological recommendations for creating conditions, encouraging and purposeful development of various types of play typical for early and preschool age, practical examples of developing the tradition of children’s play in groups.

10. Principle of supporting curiosity and research activity

The child is a born explorer, endowed with curiosity in abundance. He tends to be curious and interested in everything that happens around him. If his basic needs for affection, attention and love are satisfied, if he is healthy and well, he begins to actively take an interest in and explore his environment almost from the moment of birth. What adults seem familiar and ordinary, new and unfamiliar to a child, may interest him and surprise him. Research activity is a natural form of children’s exploration of the world, the processes of children’s learning.

The task of adults is to share with the child his surprise and interest, to admire and be surprised with him, and only then to give the necessary knowledge, colored by this surprise.

To expand the research activity and maintain the curiosity of children, freedom is important for them. Self-reliance and creativity thrive best in a free environment. If children not only follow the given path, but set the rules and find their own solutions, then they perceive the teaching as an adventure, as an exciting journey full of discoveries. When children’s curiosity is set free, there are many ideas in the children’s team about how to make discoveries and achieve results. This awakens and enhances their interest and curiosity in any subject, topic or problem. Finding their own solutions encourages children to think, ask questions and search for answers, take responsibility for their learning processes, show patience, endurance, develop motivation to solve problems, form a positive perception of themselves as successful, sometimes even creative researchers. The knowledge that children acquire at the same time is stronger and deeper.

A rigid definition of the goals and content of education from the outside makes it difficult or does not allow a growing person to gain experience in self-determination and self-regulation in various activities, a creative attitude towards the world and himself, does not contribute to the formation and development of the desire to learn constantly and independently.

11. The principle of variability in the forms of implementation of the Inspiration Program and flexibility in planning

The Inspiration program is based on the cooperation of children and adults, on supporting children’s initiative, on recognizing the child’s right to participate in decision-making, on taking into account the individual characteristics and interests of all participants, on the involvement of parents and the socio-cultural environment of the location of the kindergarten and does not set rigid framework, plans and forms of educational activities.

The program is designed for a competent teacher, interested, inspired, in love with his profession. Such a professional works creatively, and not according to a ready-made template with a mechanical implementation of a “method” or “technology”. He always brings something original and his own into the implementation of the Program and focuses on the interests and needs of a specific composition of children and the location of the kindergarten. In this context, the interests and passions of teachers are an important factor in motivation and interest in their work. Each teaching staff is called upon to find their own original version of the implementation of the Inspiration Program.

The Inspiration program provides for flexible approaches to planning and choosing the forms of its implementation, without limiting the teacher to a specific detailed content of educational activities.

The Inspiration program provides an opportunity for participants in educational relations to become its co-author.

Organizations, when developing their main educational program, can add elements of other educational programs, their own methods and forms of organization of educational work.

The Inspiration program can be used both in mass preschool organizations that previously worked according to the traditional system, and in preschool organizations that implement internationally recognized personality-oriented pedagogical concepts.

12. Principle of differentiation

Differentiated learning is a form of organizing educational activities in a children’s group, in which the organization and teachers organize the educational process and create a developing subject-spatial environment in such a way that they provide an opportunity to take into account the readiness, interests and characteristics of each child or small groups of children. Teachers who implement differentiated learning approaches create programs; choose teaching methods that develop teaching aids, organize the educational process in such a way as to satisfy the various needs of pupils.

Differentiation of learning is both a pedagogical principle and an approach to learning. In other words, it concerns not only the choice of “suitable” teaching methods, but also the philosophy that determines the implementation of the program, and the conditions for teaching the children’s group.

Differentiated learning is about providing children with “many paths that lead to learning. ” This idea implies that the educator adapts the program to the children, rather than waiting for them to adapt to it.

The task of differentiated learning is to take into account:

• readiness for learning;

• individual pace of development;

• interests;

• individual characteristics;

• educational profile of the child.

The teacher collects the necessary information in the course of pedagogical observations of children and assessing their readiness for learning using various methods and techniques (for example, talking with children, recording their preferences, covert observation, communication with parents, etc.).

Readiness for learning is determined by the level of understanding and development of the child’s skills, as well as the knowledge already available.

Interests are determined by the topics that the child wants to study. Interests may be related to the child’s life outside the organization or may relate to some objects of knowledge.

The educational profile of a child is determined by the methods in which he learns best and includes learning style (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.), the child’s preferences for working in a group (individually, small group or large group), preferences for conditions learning, places of learning (quiet bright room, with music, etc.).

Differentiated pedagogy affects educational activities at four levels: content, process, environment (including subject-developing environment) and results.

At all these four levels, the keywords are “diversity” and “alternative ways”.

In addition, differentiated learning pays special attention to the ability of children to choose ways to work (individually or in groups), ways of expression, content of activities, etc. For the choice of preschool children to be effective, the alternatives for choice proposed by the teacher must:

• correspond to the set educational goals;

• be realistically differentiated, allowing for genuine choice for children;

• protect the child from confusion at the sight of an excessive number of options.

Preschoolers should be able to independently or with the participation of a teacher not only make a choice, but also justify it. This is a “skill” that is important for the formation of independence and responsibility for one’s choice in children and is brought up only by frequent practice.

Differentiated learning is not:

• individual training;

• chaotic process;

• an alternative way of organizing homogeneous groups;

• a form of education in which the teacher receives more requests from some children and less from others.

Adaptation
Interaction with family
Children’s advice
Games
MATE:PLUS
Maths
Mathematical development
Pedagogical observations
Initiative support
cognitive development
Program “Inspiration”
Projects
Child development
Joint planning with children
Socialization
Thematic cards
Technology
Morning Circle

Time to act – VDC “Ocean”

Key meanings of the shift: test yourself in the value-semantic space of personality development, professional test, realization of creative and intellectual abilities, initiatives and social activity.

“School of Game Practitioners”

Squads: “Brigantine”, “Tiger Cub”

Orientation: social and humanitarian.

Idea: immersion of participants in the value-semantic and instrumental space of the game as a space of potential mastering new skills, searching for non-standard solutions to any problems and generating ideas; gaming trials, networking for gaming trials.

Purpose: development of strategic thinking skills, communicative competences in the process of mastering gaming technologies and gaming tests.

In the program: educational course “The ABC of game practice”, master classes from professional game practitioners, playgrounds, discussion “Reality or virtuality?”, Festival “IgroMaster”, thematic hour “Her Majesty the game!”, Festival of courtyard games , Game cafes, Creative battles, Games of the peoples of Russia, competition of game programs, presentation of author’s games, puzzle tournament, Masquerade Ball, Great Ocean Game.

Planned result: mastering the basics of developing and implementing educational games; experience in using game tools for self-development and solving real life problems; basics of project and group work.

Psychological and pedagogical support is aimed at developing creative and project thinking of participants.

Category of invited participants: students aged 12-17 who are fond of various types of creativity, sports, activists of educational organizations.

UniQuant

Team: Brigantine

Orientation: technical.

Idea of ​​the program: involvement of children in research and project activities, development of research socio-cultural, infrastructure and engineering projects, intellectual self-realization in the regions.

Purpose: development of engineering thinking, formation of soft and hard competencies (design, reflective, communicative) of program participants by including them in project and research activities.

In the program: training course “From research to project!”, training sessions “Fundamentals of research, design and project management”, “Methods and techniques for collecting and analyzing information”, “Design of engineering systems”, “Social and economic aspects of the project”, the work of project teams, work in research, inventive, experimental laboratories in the areas of “Information Technology”, “Geoinformatics”, “Aerospace Technologies”, “Robotics”, etc.

Expected result: personal positive changes of the participants associated with the choice of the trajectory of their life and pre-professional self-determination based on their own interests; experience of participation in design and research activities.

Psychological and pedagogical support of the program is aimed at unlocking the intellectual potential of participants, developing key competencies.

Category of invited participants: students aged 12-17 engaged in engineering and research.

Preliminary preparation: participation in the competitive selection of a thematic partner – FGBOU DO “Federal Center for Additional Education”, operator of the network of children’s technology parks “Quantorium” and centers “IT-cube”.

“Forum of Children’s Public Councils”

Team: “Brigantine”

Social-humanitarian orientation: