Go visit the childcare unannounced you will get a very good sense of it. If you pre book a tour they will ensure organised activities. You will get a real sense of a place without prior knowledge of your visit. If they say no to a tour when you arrive that also indicates they probably won’t have time for unexpected events that occur when your child is in care. Goodluck.

I will have to chose the closest one to home as it we have an emergency it will be easiest.

For the daycare for my youngest who has Down Syndrome I asked mums around me, sought the advice of Lifestart and visited several centers. There was one Center I think was really good and experienced with kids with disabilities and she was placed on a waiting list there. When the waiting took too look I just went to the closest Daycare Center and she could go straight in. Not the best Center in my opnion, but my girlie loves to go and she always learns something (and the Center from her).

i chose the one that is near home, has only 5 children and affordable. =)

Some Family day Care are actually more expensive than Childcare Centres. There will always be the odd child at a Child Care Centre that doesn’t seem happy for one reason or another. Some are shy ot just take a long time to settle at the beginning of the day simply because they don’t like being left. Some skip sleeps as soon as they start childcare and get tired and grumpy by lunch time. They have provisions for the little ones to have sleeps and record the times of their sleeps, what they have eaten during the day etc. You may find they won’t eat much at night as they have eaten so well during the day. One Mum had trouble getting her son to eat at night, then found out that some days she was giving him the same thing at night as he had for lunch.

Yes but I also googled and looked for reviews on local childcare centres. I also did a tour of each one to see which one I felt more comfortable with. Usually daycares will allow you to do some visits with your child to let them get settled in. It’s a good time to see if they will gel with the childcare centre.

yeah close to home is convenient for sure.

I went to three nearby centres and chose the one I felt was the best. A good way to decide is to see whether the children and staff at the centre appear happy. At one centre both staff and children looked miserable.

ask around, you will quickly hear about the bad ones, with my friends they are divided between the one centre while some of the other swear by the in home care providers which only have 5 kids or less attending on any one day.

Yes, family daycare is (for me anyway) $40 cheaper a day than a daycare centre! While there may not be as many kids to play with, I really love the personalised attention my daughter gets at FD. Our family daycare mum is the BEST!

Don’t forget to consider family day care a nanny options – both of these are far more flexible than regular childcare centres and for some children, they provide far better outcomes. They can also end up being cheaper too.

I visited a few, both family daycare and centres. I didn’t get a very good feel for the centres I visited and ended up going family daycare. It just felt right. You have to feel comfortable in the environment your kids are going to be in just as much as they do.

Last time I needed to do this was a good 5 years ago. I visited a few and did a trial session with my daughter to get a feel for the place. Chose after that. Location was also a factor.

Living rurally, we only had one childcare centre so it was easy for us to choose