Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Day Care

When we finally bought our home, the kids needed a new day care. For the sake of convenience, I had been sending the kids to the same day care as my sister's children since we'd all been living together. I trust my sister's opinion and I had a great referral from her. Plus, it just made sense the kids all go to the same place. The day care facility, Kids R Kids was wonderful. My kids had been going solely to home day care so I was glad for my 4-year-old daughter to participate in a more tradition school setting and be better prepared for Kindergarten.
My biggest complaint of the day care was the cost-$300 a week for both kids. Yep, $300 A WEEK! That cost ate up a lot of my pay check.
Well, once we moved, I wanted to find more affordable day care and began searching for home day care again (from $150-175/week for two kids). I believed my daughter had enough of the classroom setting to prepare her for the transition into Kindergarten. Plus, home day cares are usually a more nurturing environment. The home day care options available for us were full so I looked into day care facilities. I found one close to my work in a little strip center. It's nothing fancy on the outside like Kids R Kids but the day care offers all the same things. And the cost is $190/week! The over-head for a day care in a strip center verses a beautiful, stand-alone building must be considerably less. In addition, the new day care provides three meals a day instead of just two-and their food is fresh and all-natural. I have been very happy with the facility and most importantly, my kids have been happy there. My son still cries when I drop him off, but once I'm out-of-sight he's fine. My daughter is doing well with the class work and brings home similar coloring pages and work sheets as from the fancier day care. Now I will add that Kids R Kids had other benefits that made the price so much higher such as a gymnastics instructor once a week. Their facility also included computer training for kids (at an additional cost) and more field trips than my kids' current day care.
When it comes to day care, I think what matters most is the kids. They should feel happy, safe and comfortable. I'm not going to judge a day care by it's exterior-it's what's inside that counts.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Ideas to create a kid's playroom


Sent to me from my friend TL, and printed in Wondertime-

Here's ideas you can borrow for an "ingenious playroom."


"One family converted their formal dining room (useless) into a cozy, kid-friendly playroom (decidedly useful!). Here, the six highly doable strategies they used that made the room really, truly works."