5-Day Amazing Babies Moving Workshop
Natural Movement Development in
The Baby’s First Year

ABM 1 Certificate Program with Beverly Stokes

This 5-Day Certificate Program is designed to enhance the skills of educators and professionals who work in the fields of baby development, child education and in Early Years settings. It also provides fundamental movement information for Somatic Educators who work with children or adults.

Our dynamic Amazing Babies Moving (ABM) Program provides participants with a unique two-part framework for understanding natural movement development in the baby’s first year.  The benefits of this approach is that it provides a clear guide to understanding movement development, pre-verbal communication and self-motivated learning in babies.  You will find it the most effective way to communicate this important information to actively support parents and babies in the first year.

The Amazing Babies Moving Program from Birth to Walking is designed in two parts:

1 Pre-locomotion Baby – newborn to 5 months

In the pre-locomotion stage, the baby’s FloorMoves™ sessions gets the developmental process going.    During this time babies are developing their body awareness, organizing patterns of movement, and  setting up action plans in self-directed play. FloorMoves explorations are an essential daily practice for  babies that prepares them for the dynamic Locomotion Stage.

2 Locomotion Baby – 6 months to 12 months

In the second half of the first year, babies acquire the ability to move from one place to another putting  what they have practiced into action.  These fundamental movements, locomotion patterns, rhythmic  coordination and dynamic balance provide the essential foundation for babies to become dynamic  explorers, expressive communicators and self-motivated learners.

The Amazing Babies Moving™ 5-Day Workshop can be used by:

• Certified Movement Analysts (CMAs) to fulfill the requirements for their ISMETA Membership.  They also meet part of the requirements for ISMETA registration as a Somatic Movement Educator and/or Therapist.

During this 5-Day Amazing Babies Moving Program, you will:

Essential Movement Patterns

• Refine your observation skills and acquire a developmental movement framework and vocabulary.
• Experience and identify the essential Developmental Movement Patterns in the Pre-Locomotion and Locomotion Stages.
• Explore Reflexes, Righting Reactions and Equilibrium Responses.

Expressive Communication in Social Interactions

• Learn a movement analysis system and language for identifying the baby’s  functional and expressive communication skills.
• Identify the baby’s natural cues, postures and gestures that provide the preverbal basis for our adult nonverbal communication.
• Analyze our new photo vignettes that demonstrate how babies communicate their intent through preverbal gestures and interpret nonverbal messages in social interactions.

Self-Motivated Play to Mastery

• Learn to create an environment that encourages the baby’s age-appropriate play activities. In self-motivated play, babies set up action plans and develop problem-solving skills to reach their goal.
• Analyze the variability in the developmental process as demonstrated in our Amazing Babies Moving Video Vignettes.
• Babies will join us each day to enhance observation skills.

Training Materials

• The Amazing Babies Moving Book: Essential Movement to Enhance Your Baby’s Development in the First Year by Beverly Stokes will be the text used.
• The Amazing Babies Moving DVD, baby video research by Beverly Stokes,  will be used for our selected Video Vignettes Analysis.
• A Comprehensive Amazing Babies Moving Workbook will be provided

The Amazing Babies Moving (ABM) Programs began in Canada in 2003 with programs held in Toronto and locations in California. The first In-House Developmental Movement Program for Daycare Staff was held in Canada with Little Lions Waldorf Daycare and Kindergarten Staff and Resource Teachers. The Sponsor of the Program comments:

“This Training has had an impact on the educators who participated.  It enhanced our knowledge, particularly through experiential learning, and our respect for the infants we work with on a daily basis.”

Who Should Attend

This 5-Day ABM Program is for:

• Educators: early childhood, childcare professionals, childbirth instructors, nurses, infant massage instructors
• Specialists: early intervention, physical, occupational, speech, developmental kinesiologists, massage therapists,
• Optometrists: developmental optometrists
• Psychologists: prenatal/postnatal, developmental
• Somatic Educators: CMAs, Feldenkrais, Somatics, Alexander, Continuum, Trager, Yoga instructors