By the time most kids turn 4 years old, they have spent at least some time in daycare. According to statistics, more than than 80% of 4-year-olds have been in daycare at some point in their lives. For many parents, it’s an unavoidable fact of life. They need two incomes to make it financially and don’t have a close relative they can rely on for care.
But paying for that care is not cheap. Having one child in daycare is expensive enough, but studies show that having two or more kids needing care costs more than the average rent payment. That’s why it’s important when choosing childcare that you take your child to an early learning center for children.
Up until age 4 is a critical time for kids’ development. The average 2-year-old adds about five new words to his or her vocabulary daily, and the average 4-year-old asks more than 400 questions a day. While there are many wonderful home daycares, such settings often don’t lend themselves to maximum interaction between caregiver and children. In a small in-home daycare, one person may be caring for infants as well as kids who are getting ready to go to kindergarten, which means they don’t get specialization with a specific age.
An early learning center for children will provide the kind of structured preschool education that young kids need. In such centers, teachers usually stay with one group of kids all day long. For example, there may be a set of teachers for the infants up to 18 months, another set for toddlers up to age three and another set for those 3 and older. This allows those teachers to specialize in the level of early child education that is appropriate for that age group. Many such centers often try to recruit people who either have a degree in early childhood education or are in a college program, which means they have the right training to provide your child with the best early child care programs.
Finding a daycare that provides these types of programs can be daunting, but there are many resources out there that can help you find an early learning center for children. Friends, family and co-workers can be the best resources. But you might also simply want to do a search online or on social media to find centers near you and find out what people are saying about them.
