Being parents of young kids ourselves, we had a lot of these same frustrations and had many difficulties on deciding which daycare center to choose. We talked to our friends and neighbors and asked them if they were happy with their daycare center, we talked to family and asked them, we reviewed as much as we could on the The Web, and talked to several daycare facilities.

In our studies we learned certain things to look for when choosing a new daycare, which I will share with you here in this child care checklist. Think of this as a starting point when consulting possible daycare centers.

Create a group teachersduring your conference. It's really easy to miss things when you are in front of the daycare teachers and a child care checklist really helps in remembering what you feel is important to ask.

Take extra paper with you to write the answers to the questions from your child care checklist down. If you are like me, you will probably forget most of the conversations you had with the daycare staff. Chances are you will probably forget what the teachers said and keeping notes with your child care checklist is a good way to remember and compare daycare centers.

Be sure to have questions ready on your child care checklist for who would potentially be your child's primary care instructor. Your little one will be spending a lot of time with this care giver, so you want to make sure that your child will get along with thiscare giver. Watch how they interact with the other kids in their group. Do they interact andinteract with the children or are they sitting down somewhere ignoring the children? Do the children seem excited with this care giver or do they seem afraid of them?

Equipment and toys? Do the toys appear clean and well kept?
Does the facility appear to be clean and well kept? Does it look like the facility would be a kid friendly place for children?

Other great questions for your child care checklist include: What is security like in the facility? Are there plans to make sure little ones don't wander off, or that people can't wander off with the wrong children? Are the staff aware of what children go home with whom?

During an emergency situation, what is the procedure in place at the daycare center? For instance, if there is a fire nearby, or an earthquake, what is the procedure at the school? Are there enough emergency supplies at the school to last both students and staff for several days? Does the school have policies in place for lock down situations?
What is the student to teacher ratio in your child's class? Generally speaking, the lower the ratio, the more attention your child will receive.
What is the education requirements for your child's teachers? Are teachers certified? Do teachers receive special CPR training for young children?

If would have been a good idea to include this one in our own child care checklist, but after being in a daycare for awhile, I think this one would be a good one to ask as well: Are there extra costs that you have not been made aware of. Our own daycare center tacks on an additional charge for any special activities. If our school has a bounce house brought in for the children, we are charged an added activity fee to offset the cost the school pays for this. What really upsets me is that they even charge a special fee for staff appreciation days. They may as well ask for a tip. $5 isn't much, but if they have several of these events in a month, it could add another $20 or $30 to your bill.

I hope this gives you a good start on your own child care checklist and proves to be a good start to your daycare search.

About the Author:

Mike Sipes is the founder of My New Daycare.com and is the proud parent of two small children. He was frustrated with the lack of quality material on the Internet at the time for researching new daycares for his children and created MyNewDaycare.com to help other parents find a great new daycare for their children.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Parents Child Care Checklist