Helping babies thrive: Grow ECD launches a new Baby Curriculum
Grow ECD, a non-profit organisation that helps Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres provide quality education, is excited to announce the launch of its online baby curriculum focused on babies from 0 to 2 years old.
Grow’s curriculum, which was focused on 2- to 5-year-olds, now also provides a sensory-rich, stimulating, age-appropriate play-based daily programme for babies. It comes with a comprehensive digital teachers’ guide to help preschool teachers care for babies better. The curriculum was designed by education specialists to meet the unique needs of infants and tested in local preschool classrooms.
Grow ECD’s mission is to help ECD centres provide 5-star education to all children so that no matter where a child lives, they have the potential to thrive. Grow’s holistic model equips and connects ECD centres to the tools (like daily curriculums), skills (like teacher training) and resources (like classroom kits) they need to provide quality education. It also provides centre owners with the business principles and financial skills they need to run financially sustainable ECD businesses.
Tracey Chambers, CEO & Co-founder of Grow ECD, says “We are very excited to be able to include babies into our Grow ECD online curriculum. We know that babies’ brains develop most rapidly in the first 1000 days of life, and we want to make sure they receive the proper stimulation and attention they need to thrive,” she says. “The current situation at most crèches is that babies aren’t cared for well enough, they are fed and changed and basically baby-sat. Teachers often aren’t aware of the stimulation and fun learning activities you can and should expose babies to. Teachers at under-resourced ECD centres also need guidance on age-appropriate educational and found materials they can use to stimulate babies on a budget.” she says.
“Our uniquely designed baby programme focuses on developing secure connections, building resilience, and creating opportunities for self-regulation in a sensory-rich and stimulating environment. It is also very easy to use. With all the information data-free on her phone or tablet, it’s like the teacher has a mentor in her ear, bringing the curriculum to life, showing her what to do and sharing real-life, best practice tips. She’ll have access to step-by-step videos, photos, songs and voice notes. Teachers also get inspiration, guidance and resources to make teaching enjoyable and impactful,” she says.
“The curriculum provides a structured routine that creates a safe and predictable environment, with play at the heart of all learning opportunities. This curriculum is designed with age-appropriate, teacher-led, free and guided play activities to help teachers build positive neural pathways in babies' brains during this critical foundation phase.”
Grow ECD’s uniquely designed, play-based, NCF-aligned Baby Curriculum can be accessed from the Grow ECD apps (Grow Giraffe and Grow Meerkat), along with the comprehensive curriculums for 2-to-5-year-olds. The Grow ECD apps are free to centre owners, teachers and parents. The apps include many features such as learner enrolment, staff and learner attendance tracking, learner assessments, downloadable resources, performance reports, income and expenditure tracking and more – all free of charge. Centres that choose to add a subscription to the Grow ECD Online Curriculum for R1000 per term gain access to the 2–5-year-old and the baby online curriculums data-free to all their teachers.
Chambers says, “A daily curriculum specifically for babies will make life a lot easier, and learning a lot more effective, for any ECD centres that care for babies. To use it optimally, all centres would need is some basic education equipment and a dedicated baby specialist teacher who can access the online curriculum on any Android phone or tablet. It is easy to use and created by experts so the baby specialists can be confident that they are caring for and developing babies well,” she says.
Subscribe to the Grow ECD Online Curriculum now to make a lasting impact on the lives of all the children you care for – from 0 to 5 years old – with a quality education programme.
