Infant Care -- Providing The Best Care
The first year of your infant’s life is a busy one that includes taking huge strides when it comes to his physical, social, and emotional development. Our Infant classroom is dedicated to creating a nurturing and safe environment for your infant to grow and learn. Every infant has his own disposition and develops at his own pace, which is why Mary Sears Children’s Academy infant curriculum is individualized for each of our infants. Our highly trained and educated infant teachers combine developmentally appropriate activities with the social-emotional love and support your infant needs to grow and develop into a confident life-long learner.
Social & Emotional Development
At Mary Sears Children’s Academy, our teachers understand the importance of and take great pride in planning activities to bond with your baby. Mary Sears Children’s Academy infants build self-awareness and self-confidence when they receive special attention like cuddling, rocking, and being held by their teachers. These unique and intimate experiences build a sense of belonging and comfort, which leads to your child feeling safe, secure, and comfortable when exploring his environment and engaging with others.
Cognitive And Language Development
At Mary Sears Children’s Academy, cognitive and language development occurs when your infant is inspired to explore his environment. Individual attention and age appropriate toys and materials come together to help your infant begin to develop and understand concepts such as cause and effect, spatial relationships, and problem solving skills. Our infant curriculum goal is to inspire your infant every day. Your infant is having fun learning by listening to stories, poems, nursery rhymes, and music every day, as well as building his foundation for future verbal communication and literacy through responses such as cooing, babbling, and facial gestures.
Motor And Creativity Development
Mary Sears Children’s Academy Infant daily schedule follows the rhythm of your baby. We offer plenty of opportunities for your little one to develop his motor skills and improve his mobility. Our infant teachers assist and guide your infant through milestones such as holding his own bottle and participating in tummy time to developing early infant motor skills such as rolling over, sitting up, reaching, and more. Your little one will be crawling and walking before you know it!
In addition to exploring through movement, Mary Sears Children’s Academy teachers are creating unique experiences for infants to experiment with their five senses. Through various sensory and tangible materials, as well as creative art materials such as paints and crayons, your infant is given the opportunity to express his individual personality as well as explore new materials and textures.
At Mary Sears Children’s Academy, we meet the total needs of your infant on an individual basis. We provide daily progress reports to keep the lines of communication open and provide each parent with an update of your infant’s daily accomplishments and routine.
Program Highlights
Learning: In our learning programs, infants are introduced to the alphabet, numbers, shapes and colors; these four areas of learning are presented daily to increase your infant’s knowledge, create awareness, and stimulate cognitively to help each infant learn, grow, and change according to one’s own ability. All learning materials in the room are disinfected twice daily for sanitary purposes.
Books: Our infants are read to daily and they love the visual stimulation. We present stories by puppetry, big pictures, and other media that stimulate your infant’s interest. Readers are leaders, and pre-reading skills can begin now! From the very beginning you can instill in your infant a love for learning.
Exercise: Exercising stimulates body & core muscles. It strengthens bones, creates energy, and promotes mental awareness. Cognitively it creates a desire to learn and an excitement and energy to communicate.
Mirrors: We work with each infant in front of our mirrors; they love to view themselves, laugh, and smile. Mats are used for infants from 6 weeks to 3 months or when they start to roll over, creep, etc. Floors are heated, so your baby can creep, crawl, roll and have fun in a safe, clean, and sanitary environment.
Music: Children love music and our program is very music-oriented. We are always joyously singing, laughing and playing musical instruments. Infants love the sound of the musical instruments (bells, tambourines, piano, xylophone, drums, etc.). We even have our very own Mary Sears Band!
Nutrition: Nutrition is key in an infant’s growth. We want to build strong bodies, minds, and stimulate mental awareness. All meals are home-cooked, nutritious and delicious at our day care/academy.
Feedings: Infants are fed every three hours, unless your child is on a special formula or needs to be fed more or less frequently. Depending on what your pediatrician recommends we can introduce whole nutritional pureed foods prepared fresh daily by our dietician.
Cribs: Each infant has their own crib, labeled with their name and 3 sets of sheets. Each infant has their own basket of materials under their crib including books, musical instruments, interlocking items, rattles, etc. These are not shared with any other infant.
The Infant Care program is available at all locations: Joliet, Lockport, Manteno and Orland Park.
