Programs·Infants6 weeks – 12 months
Infant care in Winter ParkI can discover.
Babies learn through relationships, movement, their senses, and thousands of small discoveries. Responsive care is not the thing that happens before the curriculum here — at this age it is the curriculum, because a baby who feels safe explores more.
What a day holds
Infant days run on your baby’s clock, not ours. What is fixed is the adult: the same faces, every day.
One primary caregiver
Someone who learns their rhythms, recognizes their cues, knows how they like to be held, and becomes a familiar, trusted face each day.
Their own rhythm
Whenever possible, the same teacher is there for feeding, changing, comforting, and settling—creating the consistency that helps your baby feel safe, secure, and ready to explore.
Floor time, not container time
Babies need room to move. We prioritize time on a clean, safe floor where they can stretch, roll, reach, sit, crawl, and explore real objects at their own pace.
Outside every day
A stroller ride under the trees. Sunlight through the leaves. Birds, breezes, voices, and the sounds of the neighborhood. The world is brand new to a baby. We make time every day for babies to be outside, notice what surrounds them, and experience the world beyond the classroom.
Baby Sign Language
Before babies can say the words, they can begin learning ways to communicate. Simple signs are incorporated into everyday routines to help babies express needs and build early communication skills.
Baby STEAM
Even our youngest learners are natural investigators. Age-appropriate sensory experiences introduce cause and effect, texture, movement, sound, light, color, and early problem-solving through safe exploration.
Camera Viewing
Stay connected to your baby’s day. Secure camera viewing gives families an additional window into the classroom and peace of mind while their child is in our care.
Daily Family Communication
From feeding and naps to diapering and special moments, families receive updates that help them stay connected to their baby’s routines and experiences throughout the day.
Sensory Exploration
Babies learn through their senses. Carefully selected materials and experiences encourage touching, reaching, listening, observing, grasping, and discovering.
Early Language & Literacy
Books, songs, conversation, rhymes, and responsive interactions surround babies with language throughout the day—building the earliest foundations for communication and literacy.
Movement & Motor Development
Plenty of safe floor time gives babies opportunities to reach, roll, sit, crawl, pull up, and move as their bodies are ready.
Individual Feeding & Sleep Rhythms
We work with each baby’s individual routines and family preferences, recognizing that infant development doesn’t follow a classroom clock.
The Winter Park School · Infant Room
Rhythm of the Day
Capacity 12 · Ratio 1:4 · 3 primary caregivers, each with the same 4 babies
every baby keeps their own clock.
7:00–8:30
Welcome & Arrival
Warm greeting, hand washing and a parent hand-off: last bottle, last sleep, mood. Babies arrive awake; breakfast ends by 8:00.
8:30–9:00
Floor Exploration & Tummy Time
Treasure baskets, low mirrors, soft climbers and plenty of floor time.
9:00–9:10
Morning Gathering
Name songs, baby-doll greetings and signs for the day. Optional: babies may watch from a lap or keep playing.
9:10–10:00
Outdoor Discovery
Blanket and tummy time in the shade, buggy walks around campus, grass, leaves and water.
10:00–11:00
Small-Group Invitations
Two or three babies at a time from individual plans: sensory bottles, soft books, music and sound play.
11:00–12:00
Lunch & Settling
Older infants eat together at a low table, teachers seated alongside. Younger infants take bottles per parent plan.
12:00–2:00
Quiet Room Window
Lights dimmed, soft music, safe sleep on the back in an empty crib. Awake babies get books and quiet floor play.
2:00–2:30
Wake-Up, Snack & Bottles
Cuddles, snack and bottles, fresh diapers.
2:30–3:00
Atelier Visit
Baby STEAM in the atelier: light table, light and shadow, ramps and balls, mark-making. Photographed for Procare.
3:00–4:00
Outdoor Discovery or Sensory Room
Outside when the heat index allows; otherwise the Sensory Room or indoor gross motor.
4:00–5:00
Stories, Songs & Puppets
Language-rich play with bubbles and signing.
5:00–6:00
Calm Goodbyes
Quiet play. Each family hears one highlight of the day. Toy reset and sanitizing.
All day, for each baby
- Fed on demand, following the parent plan
- Sleeps whenever tired, always on the back
- Diaper checked at least every 2 hours, changed right away
- Short tummy-time sessions throughout the day
- Hands washed before meals, after diapering and outdoors
- Signs woven into every routine: more, milk, all done
Room guidelines
- No toys from home
- Mouthed toys go straight to the sanitize bin
- Open or sippy cup with meals from about 6 months
- Move to Toddlers once pulling up or walking; no bottles there
- Teachers sit and talk with babies at every meal
- Rainy days: parachute, balls, bubbles and think cards
Times flex to fit each child’s needs. · Curiosity leads the way. ✶ Updated October 2026
Inside the infant room
Under the play
What we are actually building
Nothing on a worksheet. Three things, and they are the foundation everything after age three stands on.
Attachment
A baby who trusts an adult will leave that adult’s lap to investigate something new — and come back. That loop is the first version of the thinking cycle.
Language density
We narrate. Constantly. What we are doing, what you are doing, what just happened. The number of words a baby hears in a day predicts more than almost anything else we could do.
Cause and effect
Drop it and it falls. Push it and it moves. Cry and someone comes. Every one of those is a hypothesis being tested for the first time.
Why we talk so much to babies
A quiet room is a missed year.
Language is the one thing at this age that compounds. So our infant teachers narrate — the nappy change, the walk to the window, the name of the thing your baby is staring at. Not baby talk. Real sentences, all day.
One morning in the infant room
A teacher narrates the nappy change, the walk to the window, the name of the thing your baby is staring at. By lunchtime that is thousands of words, nearly all of them about whatever she was looking at.
real sentences, all day — not baby talk.
What narration sounds like
“You are watching the fan. It is going around and around. It makes a soft noise, can you hear it? I am going to lift you now — one, two, up.”
And what we do with it at home
Nothing to buy, nothing to practice. Say what you are doing while you do it. Bath, kitchen, car seat. That is the whole intervention, and it is the strongest one there is at this age.
A moment from this room
A seven-month-old spent four minutes with a metal whisk and a wooden bowl. Bang, listen. Bang softer, listen. Turn it over, try the handle. Her teacher sat close and said almost nothing, which was the hardest and most important part of the job that morning.
four minutes is a very long time when you are seven months old.
The practical part.
Small groups, capped by room, with the ratio posted on the door. Bottles, breast milk, formula and solids all handled to your written plan. Daily notes go home in the app — sleep, feeds, nappies, and one thing that happened.
Programs & ages
Every age, one method. Pick a room.
Come watch them think.
Twenty minutes in this room on an ordinary weekday morning will tell you more than this page can.