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Friday, November 11, 2005

Infant Lesson Planning Form

This lesson planning form can be used to make weekly individual plans for infants and young toddlers.

Write the name and age of the child in the left column box and then fill in the boxes in that row with activities.

It's a good idea to plan activities based on each child's needs. For example, if a very young baby hasn't yet learned to roll over from front to back, a good activity for that child might be some "directed tummy time." You can place the child on a blanket or mat on the floor and hold a toy or rattle to the side and in front of the child so that they will reach for it.

Many times when babies do this, their reaching arm will be forward and the weight of their head and the act of reaching will cause them to roll over. If you do this with them a little each day, they make the connection between the movements involved and rolling over, and they can do it themselves.

So, on the form, I would put "directed tummy time" knowing what I meant and I would explain what it is to the parent so that they can do this at home and help reinforce the learning.

Some may eschew the idea of babies having "lesson plans" or planned activities, but there are many skills that are being learned during this time that you can help them with, little by little. You don't want to be specifically "teaching" these things, or trying to force them to develop skills faster... but you can take cues from each child about his or her own rate of development and assist them in their learning.

.pdf version of weekly infant lesson planning form

Microsoft Word version of infant lesson planning form

2 comments:

Letitia Weikel said...

I agree that even a young infant or toddler can benefit from having a lesson plan than can be shared with parents. Not in the sense that it is a specific "lesson", but an idea of things that can be done to help the infant develop. Especially for children in day care where the parent may not be able to observe during the day how the infant is developing and what type of help they might need. The more information the care giver can share about the day, activity, etc the more informed and "included" the parent will be.

michlle nowotarski said...

I was wandering if you have a site or know of a site to help with lesson planning for toddlers around the age 2. I am doing a paper for it and I am totally stumped. On top of that we have to do all areas of development for each activity I am at a brain feeze on that.