A "Tour" of the Child Care Center

This month I thought I would share classroom specific information about our center to help you learn more about the work we do! We have six classrooms throughout the building, and our youngest classroom is Infants, taking care of kids from one-month up to 12-months. All our classrooms are open the same hours as the building, 6am-6:30pm, M-F. Some centers in the area limit hours for their Infant classrooms, but we do not. All our classrooms are staffed with three full time staff staggered throughout the day. This means that sometimes there are three staff in the room, but usually the third staff is there to cover breaks, prep time, and meeting time.

In our Infant Room, we can take care of up to eight babies and it has a 1:4 ratio (one teacher for every four babies, a second teacher must be present if we go over four babies). We can take babies as young as one-month, but now that Washington state has a paid family leave plan in place, most babies don’t start until three-months. Once the babies turn one year old, they start transitioning into our One’s Room for a week and then move into there.

Our Lead Teacher (6 am-2:30 pm) in our Infant classroom has completed her Associate’s Degree in Early Childhood Education and has been employed with us almost seven years. She trained directly under Dulce when she was our Infant Lead before she moved into the Office as our Assistant Director. Our Assistant Teacher (10 am-6:30 pm), planning to start her college education soon, is a mother to a child attending our center, and has been with us a year and a half. Our Caregiver (8 am-4:30 pm) has also been with us a year and a half. 

We provide all the food for all the children in our center, even in our Infant Room. Some families do choose to bring in breast milk or an alternative formula rather than using the one we provide. Our Infant Staff must keep up good communication with the families as the babies start eating food so we know what foods to introduce and when. By the time they move into our One’s Room, they are eating all the normal table food we provide to all the other classrooms. Our cook adjusts meals as needed to accommodate allergies/intolerances. All the classrooms in our building (excluding our school age room) assess their students throughout the year and provide two sets of parent teacher conferences. In Infants, this helps staff and parents recognize when their child may be delayed in certain skills. When this happens, we can recommend steps to take, like discussing the problem with their doctor or getting evaluated for Occupational Therapy. Many of the infants throughout the years have had their therapists come on-site to provide services. This usually means physical or feeding therapy for our Infants. 

A requirement of having an Infant Room means that we have a Nurse Consultant come visit us monthly. Our nurse will visit the Infant Room, observe the infants, and discuss concerns, successes, and news with the staff. She also meets with me and shares information on illnesses that are going around, vaccination information, new rules, or policies, and can also go visit other rooms if we want her advice. 

By Heidi Perry, Director

We welcome you to visit our website to learn and see more!