ABSTRACT
Children have wide-ranging and complex needs and many books have been written about what these are and how they can or should be met. Here we look briefly at what a child needs in order to learn and thrive in the infant classroom. We have found Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs (Figure 7.1) useful as a framework (Maslow 1954). It illustrates clearly that there are some needs that will be of greater immediacy for some children at certain times and that a teacher who is not aware of this may be less successful in her attempts to focus on other ‘higher’ needs.
