In this view of development, adults hold the key to teaching relatively helpless infants how to receive and organize information about the world. In support of this approach, countless educational toys and materials have been designed to teach babies specific lessons. Increasingly, however, experts in the field of early development and care have come to recognize the importance of infants and toddlers having the freedom to make learning choices and to experience the world in their own terms. Rather, the focus is on facilitating natural interests and urges to learn. This is done by providing infants with close and responsive relationships with caregivers, by designing safe and interesting and developmentally appropriate environments, giving infants uninterrupted time to explore, and interacting with infants in ways that emotionally and intellectually support their initiations in discovery and learning.
Infants are ready to learn from birth on.
At birth, they are able to absorb information from the sights, sounds and scents around them to store it, to sort it out, and to use this information to explore more precisely the world around them. This urge to explore springs forth at the moment of birth. The caregiver s role as facilitator rather than teacher is best understood when we take into account this inherent urge to explore and to direct one s own learning. Caregivers best develop their facilitator role through observation of infants at play and through study. Observation gives them the information they need to respond to infants in ways that support learning.