Leonardo da Nathan

We’ve been sending Nathan to daycare for about four months now. We started at once a week so that I could pop into the office to check-in for meetings and stuff. I was able to work from home on other days.

Toward the end of the year, it became increasing challenging to be productive at work with Nathan at home with me. So we decided to increase the number of daycare days per week.

As our existing family daycare had no other slots available, we found a second family daycare centre to share the load.

Family daycares are my absolute top choice of daycare options. The carers operate out of their own house which I found to be more homey and cosy. I love the fact that they are smaller scale (maximum of four kids per household) which provides a more intimate setting for the kids to interact in.

I also think the risk of contagious sicknesses spreading is a lot lower in family daycares. So far over the past year, Nathan has never fallen ill or caught any sicknesses as a result of going to daycare.

On the other hand, I thought that the downside of family daycares means that the activities are less structured and they provided less formal tracking of the day’s programme. However the new daycare we just stared at has blown away all such preconceptions.

Here is a glimpse into the daily record book our carer has to note down all the details of the day…

She notes down details of what the kids eat for morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea; exact times of nappy changes/toileting; time and duration of naps; how much milk they took from the bottle; and my favourite is notes on activities they did that day.

Also, she has been very conscientious in organising art & craft activities or some sort of textural play. These are a couple of recent masterpieces Nathan has brought home with him plus excerpts of the carer’s notes on the artwork he did that day…

“…Finger painting with food colouring mixed with cream…”

“…Collage with red paper and ribbons – he can put glue with glustick and pick up small pieces of paper…”

“…Finger painting – introduced primary colours…”

She’s also done some cooking/baking and included Nathan in the activity: “…We made gingerbread men today – he enjoyed watching and feeling the dough and tried to put it in his mouth…”

Plus there was also the handprint painting which I featured in my new year post. It’ also inspired me to do my own art & craft activities at home. Still it’s great that Nathan’s getting plenty of opportunities to express his artistic side with someone else to deal with the mess :)