Infants Six Weeks and Older
Infant and Newborn Daycare
Safe Care for Your Infant
Infants at Grace Community School are kids from ages six weeks to twelve months old. Babies can start attending as soon as they are six weeks old. You can drop off and pick up any time we’re open – 6:30 am to 6:00 pm. We have an open-door policy – feel free to stop by and visit your child at any time.
We encourage interested parents to stop by ahead of time (even as soon as you know you’re expecting!) since we almost always run a waitlist in our infant rooms. We follow a ratio of one caregiver to four infants, and your baby will have his or her own assigned crib. If you are signing up ahead of time, you can fill out enrollment paperwork with an estimated start date to hold your spot.
Infants are constantly growing, developing, and learning. We don’t waste these precious early opportunities to encourage learning through play, music and movement, tummy time, verbal stimulation, and of course, the babies love bubbles! Our activities are designed to promote physical, cognitive, socio-emotional, and language development.
We use the Procare parent engagement app to send updates about your baby with diaper times, nap times, information about feedings, photos, videos, and more. Your infant’s wellbeing is our priority. Caregivers are CPR and First Aid-certified. Each infant classroom has the equipment to safely refrigerate and heat bottles.
It’s natural to want to see our classrooms in action before starting your child. So we invite parents to come in, tour our facilities, see our infant rooms, and meet the baby room teachers.
Our Approach
We know babies have their own schedules and develop at their own pace, so we respect individual feeding and nap schedules. We have customized learning plans that boost development across all the early childhood domains. Our low caregiver-to-child ratio ensures lots of one-on-one time with teachers. Each baby is special and unique!
Our caregivers engage with infants both physically and verbally. Newborns are growing and changing every day. These are critical month’s in a child’s development, and research shows that adult interaction with babies is needed to help them grow and thrive. Basically, the more we play and interact with babies, the more they learn and blossom into well-adjusted kids.
Grace Community School infant rooms are specially designed and fully furnished with everything babies need to grow and be happy. Your baby deserves the best care, and this is the ideal learning environment. We have soft textures, books, toys, and lots of developmentally appropriate equipment for play and physical activity.
What's In Our Infant Rooms
Our infant rooms are ready for your little one!
Grace Community School infant classrooms are fully supplied with age and developmentally appropriate, non-toxic materials and supplies.
Materials include:
- soft books
- soft baby dolls
- pictures of babies and families
- large balls to play with
- soft vinyl play mats for tummy time and active play (gross motor)
- soft blocks
- colorful texture toys
- push toys for older infants
- swings and bouncers
- sensory bottles
- play centers and manipulatives to develop fine motor skill
- teething toys and rattles
- cushions for younger infants
- musical instruments
- changing tables
Infant Meal Program
When it comes to food for your baby, you’ve got options. This includes a selection of baby formula and baby food for older infants. You’re also welcome to bring your own food. Please provide clean, labeled bottles daily for your baby (get a complete checklist of everything needed here on our Downloads page). We also support breastfeeding moms. Read more about our free infant food program here.
A Typical Day in Our Infant Class
We’re open when you need us, Monday through Friday. We don’t have a cut-off time, so you can drop off anytime and pick up anytime between 6:30 am and 6:00 pm. This goes for our infant rooms, too.
When you drop off, we’ll ask when the baby’s last feeding was so we know how the day is going and how to adjust the future feeding times. We know that babies are on their own schedule, so let us know what feeding and nap schedule your baby is used to, and we’ll do our best to accommodate.
At any time in our infant rooms, some babies will be eating, some will be sleeping, others eating, getting tummy time, playing with the teachers, swinging in the swing, or being cuddled. We keep our infants active!
Daily activities include:
- Music and dance time
- Soft block building
- Ball play
- Storytime
- Sensory play
- Outdoor time in the big stroller (weather-permitting)
- Vocabulary building (pointing and talking)
We’d love for you to schedule a tour to visit and see our infant rooms in operation.
Scheduled changing times for the babies are every two hours, with more as needed. We log nap times, changes, bottles, and even when you bring in supplies like diapers and wipes. Your baby’s daily note will tell you if you are running low on supplies.
We store diapers and wipes in the room within easy reach of the changing area. Infants sleep in their own cribs. Please provide a fitted crib sheet and light blanket for nap times. Your weekly Grace Community School tuition covers all the hours you are open, so you don’t have to keep to a particular timetable – we’ll accommodate your schedule.
Infant Developmental Goals
Grace Community School caregivers work with your child to achieve a variety of learning goals. Each goal has specific objectives.
Goal 1: To Learn About Themselves
To feel valued and secure in their relationships
To feel competent and proud about what they can do
To express their independence
Goal 2: To Learn About Their Feelings
To communicate a broad range of emotions through gestures, sounds, and eventually words
To express their feelings in appropriate ways
Goal 3: To Learn About Others
To develop trusting relationships with nurturing peers
To show interest in peers
To demonstrate caring and cooperation
To try out roles and relationships through imitation and play
Goal 4: To Learn About Communicating
To express needs and thoughts without using words
To identify with a home language
To respond to verbal and nonverbal commands
To communicate through language
Goal 5: To Learn About Moving and Doing
To develop gross motor skills
To develop fine motor skills
To coordinate eye and hand movements
To develop self-help skills
Goal 6: To Acquire Thinking Skills
To gain an understanding of basic concepts and relationships
To apply knowledge to new situations
To develop strategies for solving problems
How We Teach the Babies
Babies grow in many ways as they develop. Physical development concerns a baby’s body and physical health and fitness. Gross motor involve things like crawling, balancing, walking, and dancing. Activities like picking up toys and learning to feed themselves are examples of fine motor skills. Infants learn language faster than you think, and they primarily learn language by hearing the adults around them talk and interacting with parents and caregivers. This is why talking to your baby is so important! Cognitive development is all about the brain. As babies play and grow and interact with those around them, they learn problem-solving, decision-making and can understand more and more concepts and what’s going on around them. Watching the faces of caregivers and their classmates, playing with other babies, learning emotions and how to handle them, and picking up visual cues during conversation contributes to social/emotional development.
The best way to teach infants is through interaction: playing with them, singing songs, reading stories, and nursery rhymes. Soft block building, sorting objects, hearing and practicing animal sounds, playing with balls, poems, and peek-a-boo games, clean art activities, and feeling different textures all help babies develop. The foundation of language and literacy is built during these early months, so we’re constantly talking to and engaging with the babies physically and verbally. Since each baby is in their own developmental stage (including whether the baby is walking, scooting, crawling, and so on), we have Individualized learning plans. Kids, no matter what their age, get used to a routine. We do our best to accommodate whatever schedule works best for each baby.
As your child’s caregivers, we get to see a lot of developmental milestones. We take photos! You’ll get a weekly printed photo of your baby here at school, as well as that daily note telling you how the day was.
A priority with older infants is preparing them to transition to the toddler room. We like to make a gradual changeover to the one-year-old room, including getting used to sleeping on a rest mat.
Your child is on the path to success at Grace Community School! Everything is so new and exciting for little ones – every day is an adventure.
Affordable Infant Childcare
Learn More About Grace Community School
There’s lots more information on the Grace Community School website. Click here to read more parent info or browse our FAQs.
If you’re ready to enroll, you can fill out enrollment paperwork digitally and get started today.
Whether you need infant care, summer camp, or something in-between, Grace Community School has a program to help you.
Infant Care Locations
The following Grace Community School locations have infant care: