Birth to 3 Classroom Resources

Developmental milestones are skills most children can do by a certain age.  There are important milestones children achieve at each stage of life. Each child is an individual, so it is important to remember that a milestone checklist is only a guide for growth and development. Developmental milestones can help caregivers become aware of what skills are expected at what ages and acknowledge what the child is accomplishing–a first smile, a first step, a first word.

• Download developmental milestones checklists in English and Spanish

Through CLI Engage, access the developmental milestones checklists as downloadable resources, or login to use the online tracking tool to document children’s growth over time and pull reports.

• How to Use the Developmental Milestones Checklist

Infants and toddlers grow and change rapidly during the first three years. There are many tools available to help parents learn about their child’s growth and development, as well as resources for parents who have developmental concerns about their child. Check out the resources on this page to learn about developmental milestones, developmental screening tools, and Early Childhood Intervention services for families and their children with developmental delays or disabilities.

• Understanding Developmental Screening & Early Intervention

Parents and guardians should be regularly informed of how their children are progressing and provided concrete ways they can support their children in key learning areas. Early care providers and teachers have a unique opportunity to partner with families in keeping infants and toddlers on a healthy path to development, especially when a child may be experiencing developmental delays.

• Resources to help you discuss child development with parents and families

In this FREE online training, you’ll see instructional strategies in action through video of real teacher-child interactions, learn more about common child development theories, hear from experts on frequently asked questions, track child developmental milestones, and more!

CIRCLE Infant & Toddler Teacher Training: Play with Me Series:

• Talk with Me: Promoting Early Language Development
• Read with Me: Promoting Early Literacy Development
• Grow with Me: Understanding and Using Developmental Assessments
• Connect with Me: Supporting Early Social & Emotional Development
• Learn with Me: Supporting Early Cognitive Development

How to Access the CIRCLE Infant and Toddler Training

The Children’s Learning Institute partnered with the Texas Workforce Commission to provide free, online training that guides teachers through the developmental stages of child growth and instructional strategies of early learning domains presented in the Texas Infant, Toddler, and Three-Year-Old Early Learning Guidelines (ITELG). This training is designed to assist caregivers in understanding early childhood development and in making the most of each day during the early years of growth.

• Infant, Toddler & Three-Year-Old Early Learning Guidelines & Training
• How to Access the Texas ITELG Online Training

CLI has expanded its online courses to provide early childhood teachers the training hours needed to apply for the Child Development Associate (CDA) Credential™ for Center-Based Programs, Preschool Endorsement through the Council for Professional Recognition.

• CIRCLE CDA Training Program
• How to Access the CIRCLE CDA Training Program

Beginning Education: Early Childcare at Home (BEECH) is an online professional development system specifically designed for home-based child care providers by the Children’s Learning Institute. The system includes 20 sessions, each approximately one hour in length that incorporate videos, audio files, photos, and home-based scenarios. BEECH sessions cover a broad range of topics to support family-based child care providers and build their knowledge in key school readiness areas to support the children in their care.

• Beginning Education: Early Childcare at Home
• How to Access the BEECH Online Modules

• Texas ITSN Webinars and Presentations

The CIRCLE Infant & Toddler Curriculum provides everything your program needs to create and implement weekly lesson plans that support meaningful interactions and playful learning experiences for infant and toddler children. The digital version is free of charge to all educators, with printed versions also available.

• CIRCLE Infant & Toddler Curriculum

The CIRCLE Activity Collection: Infant & Toddler provides quality activities to support language, social emotional, health, and cognitive skills for children from birth through 36 months. This classroom collection is perfect for center- and home-based childcare and is fully aligned to the state’s early learning guidelines and Early Head Start framework. Free of charge to all educators.

• Infant and Toddler Collection
• Colección de bebés y niños pequeños

CIRCLE Activity Collection: Infant & Toddler Activities

There is a search feature for the CIRCLE Activity Collection by Head Start Early Learning Outcomes.   

• Search Activities by HS ELO
• Lista de Head Start

The CIRCLE Activity Collection: Family is available in English and Spanish as a family resource to provides a variety of hands-on activities to use at home. This collection is organized around seven learning domains: Language & Communication, Reading & Writing, Math, Science, Social & Emotional, Physical Development, and Art & Sensory. There is a sample letter that can be used to invite parents to partner with their child’s teacher by engaging in activities from the collection that support child development through play.

• CIRCLE Activity Collection: Family
• La Colección de actividades CIRCLE para la Familia

Parent Introduction letter to the CIRCLE Activity Collection: Family

This sample letter invites parents to partner with their child’s teacher by engaging in activities from the collection that support child development through play.

Sample Parent Introduction Letters (English and Spanish)

The Texas Infant, Toddler, and Three-Year-Old Early Learning Guidelines (ITELG) are intended to positively influence the design of professional development strategies, parent engagement, administrative planning, key class materials, and curricula. Above all else, the ITELG are a learning tool for caregivers. When equipped with the ITELG, caregivers can support a child’s growth, development, and learning for success in school and life. The ITELG include strategies for addressing children with special needs and those who are English language learners and feature developmental information in the following domains: 

• Physical health and motor development 
• Social and emotional development 
• Language and communication 
• Cognitive development 

The ITELG are available for download in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. 

Infant & Toddler Classroom Environment Checklist 

The CIRCLE Classroom Environment Checklist (CEC) is a tool that early childhood professionals can use to evaluate and improve their classroom environments. The CEC can be a great tool to use at the beginning of year to set goals for classroom enhancements, track the environment progress over time, and provide specific information for technical assistance.  

• Classroom Environment Checklist (CEC) 
• Film a Walk-Through Video in Infant & Toddler Classrooms

The CIRCLE Classroom Observation Tool (COT) is a formative assessment that includes teaching behaviors that are known to make up high quality instruction. The COT is typically used with a coach or intervention specialist to annotate observed instructional behaviors, referenced for creating specific short-term goals, and to track progress throughout the year to promote effective teaching. The system is well-aligned with the Texas ITELG and the goals are organized by content areas.

• Classroom Observation and Goal-Setting Tools: Infant and Toddler Teacher Competencies
• CIRCLE Infant & Toddler Teacher Competencies Implementation Guide
• How to Use the Administrator COT
• COT Reports

CLI’s family engagement resources make the most of procedures you likely already have in place, such as progress monitoring, homework, parent-teacher conferences, and open houses.

Family Engagement Toolkit

Family Engagement Teacher Strategy Checklist: Infant & Toddler Version

The checklist can be used to self-assess where you are in your family engagement efforts and to set goals for practicing new strategies.

• Family Engagement Teacher Strategy Checklist: Infant & Toddler Version

The Texas Workforce Commission and the Children’s Learning Institute have partnered to deliver the first-ever ITSN for Texas!

The Texas (Infant-Toddler Specialist) ITSN offers professional development opportunities and collaborative experiences for specialists (mentors) and teachers covering a wide range of topics specific to supporting infant and toddler development. Please join us as we work to shape the future of infant-toddler care in our state.​

• Texas ITSN

Supporting Spouts

Understanding how to provide children with an early foundation in school readiness skills is critical, as many states estimate that half of their students arrive at kindergarten already far behind where they need to be to have a good chance at succeeding at school. Acknowledging that children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds consistently perform lower on academic readiness measures than children from higher SES backgrounds, the purpose of this project is to adapt research-based parent and teacher interventions,  Play and Learning Strategies (PALS), Strategies for Early Education and Developmental Success (SEEDS), which is based on Beginning Education: Early Childcare at Home (BEECH), to examine the benefit to low-income infants’ and toddlers’ language, cognitive, and social-emotional development as well as self-regulation skills. View the Administration Guide.

• Supporting Sprouts

Strategies for Early Education and Developmental Success (SEEDS)

SEEDS is an online video-based course for infant/toddler teachers.  Available in Spanish and English, SEEDS is comprised of 14 professional development courses.  In addition to online courses that teachers complete independently, there is also a coach-facilitated option in which teachers meet with coaches weekly either face-to-face or in a video call, to review content and in-classroom practice. 

• Strategies for Early Education and Developmental Success (SEEDS)

Play and Learning Strategies (ePALS)

ePALS is a preventive intervention program to strengthen the bond between parent and child and to stimulate early language, cognitive, and social development. Based on longitudinal observations, the program was developed to facilitate parents’ mastery of specific skills for interacting with their infants, toddlers, and preschoolers that lead to better child outcomes, particularly in children from families with limited resources.   

Parents independently complete online sessions and then meet weekly with trained parent coaches who review the learned strategies, observe interactions, and support practice using specific techniques. The online PALS sessions use videotaped examples of real mothers and children to demonstrate each concept and allow the parent to critique these examples before practicing the new skills with her own child. Guided practice opportunities recorded between each session help parents move from watching, listening and talking, to doing. 

Available in Spanish and English, ePALS is comprised of 11 online sessions for parents of infants and 14 online sessions for parents of toddlers. 

• Play and Learning Strategies (ePALS)

View all Early Head Start Programs