Choosing a daycare is an important parenting decision in the daily care of your toddler or infant. Since daycare is the place where your child will spend a significant portion of their day during the week, you want to feel comfortable that your infant or toddler is in good hands and that they are being well taken care of. This article will outline some ideas on how to evaluate a potential daycare facility and provide some tips on what to look for when picking a daycare.
To start the process, make a list of several daycares that are in your desired location. There are two schools of thought on where the daycare should be located. Most people like their daycare to be close to either their home or work.
When you have picked a specific location and found several daycares in that area, schedule a visit to each facility. I recommend you start this process several months before you know you will need to enroll your child as there can be a waiting list to get accepted into daycares. To schedule the visit, call each daycare and tell them you would like a tour. This will let you get a feel for the facility and talk to the director and teachers. Most all daycares will happily oblige.
Here are some things to look for and ask about when you visit each daycare:
1. How are the classes separated by age? Some daycares will have all children from age 0 to 2 in the same class, others will have a higher degree of separation. The daycare we use has a class for 0 - 9 months, one for 9 - 12 months, one for 12 - 18 months and one for 18 - 36 months. We prefer having the classes separated so that all the kids are roughly the same age and are cared for in the same manner. I like this better than having one class with infants and 2 years olds in the same room.
2. What is the curriculum for the room your child will be in? Is there an effort to teach children new things like letters and numbers or are the teachers just trying to baby-sit the children and keep them under control?
3. Check the Child Protective Services website for your state and look to see if they list violations reported for each daycare. Keep in mind that there are many violations and some are more important than others. It might not be a big deal that a daycare got a violation notice for not posting a class curriculum, but if they have lost a child, it is a whole different ball of wax.
4. Go to your child’s prospective class and talk to the teachers in that room. Make sure you are comfortable with the people that will be taking care of your child.
5. Make sure you know the daily schedule. Especially important is the feeding schedule. You need to know in advance if they provide breakfast, lunch, etc or if you need to feed your child at home and bring lunch.
6. Ask about the tenure of the teachers. A daycare that constantly turns over help is less appealing than one that has had the same teachers for years.
7. Find out about activities such as outdoor play, swimming time, field trips, etc. Again, you don’t want to be surprised with what your child is doing during the day.
8. Finally, ask friends for references and experiences. They might have some firsthand knowledge or recommendations to make you decision easier.
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