There are many benefits to choosing a home daycare provider:
- Since family daycares are located in the owner's home, they provide children with a familiar setting, comfortable and non-institutional surroundings, and typical home-like routines. Significant research has provided evidence that warm, loving and home-like settings are natural environments for children during early childhood.
- Family daycares provide care for a wide range of ages, children are able to stay with one child care provider for many years which fosters trust and feelings of security in children. The staff at a large daycare center usually turns over quickly, resulting in a less stable relationship between the child care provider and child.
- In family daycare, siblings are not separated by age into different classrooms. Siblings spend the day together and are able to interact, play, and learn together. Children have an opportunity to play with and learn from children of all ages.
- The child care providers in family daycare have attended training to become licensed and must continue to receive training on an ongoing basis.
- Smaller group size in a family daycare home allows for more individual attention for each child. Family daycare tends to offer smaller ratios of children to adults, often allowing early intervention and special needs care to be more readily available.
- Family daycares serve home-cooked, individually prepared meals.
- Family daycare offers a healthier environment because there is less illness in a small group of children.
- Family daycare homes tend to close fewer holidays than centers.
- The foundation of family daycare is relationships. Relationships between parents and providers, providers and the children and the children with each other. Family daycare fosters emotionally secure interpersonal relationships with all families involved in care.
- Infant care tends to be more readily available in family daycare programs and the benefits of this form of care are tremendously advantageous to very young children.
Why Choose This Family Daycare?
Tadpoles Pollywogs & Froglets Daycare provides some unique learning opportunities:
- We have a small vegetable garden and grow some of our own food. Children are actively involved in harvesting strawberries, beans, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs for our daily meals. Children who participate in growing food have a better understanding of natural science, what real food looks like and where it comes from, are proud of what they helped to grow, are more likely to try new foods, and less likely to be picky eaters as they grow older.
- In addition to growing some of our own food, we also purchase much of our fruits and vegetables from farmer's markets whose growers use more organic growing methods and less pesticides, resulting in healthier food.
- We have nearly 300 children's books at last count! Subject matter has an emphasis on science, animals (particularly dogs), art, geography, ballet, and diversity. Children are read to daily.
- We do lots of hands-on learning activities from gardening to art to science activities. Some examples include: growing butterflies, science experiments, keeping nature journals, and more.
- We believe that daycare should make parents' lives easier which is why we provide all disposable diapers and wipes for the children in care. It's one less thing for parents to worry about.