Tours are one the most important steps in identifying a child care program that works for you. By the time you get to this stage, you’ve likely narrowed down your options to a handful of around 2 to 5 child care programs. To set up a tour of a program you’ll need to contact the Director.
Planned tours can be helpful as a first starting point for you to decide if you’re serious about a child care program. Attend a planned or group tour to get an overall sense of the feel of the program. From there, limit your list of programs to a handful of programs you’d seriously like to consider. Try to schedule a tour that is just by yourself and not with a group for this list of programs.
Completing tours by yourself will give you a much more realistic sense of what the program is like. This is because on a planned tour they’re prepped to impress so you may not get a good sense of what the child care program is like on a day-to-day basis.
What time of day to do child care tours
Contact the Director for each child care program on your list to schedule your one-on-one tours. Ask to schedule your tours during times when teachers are most engaged with the children in their classrooms. This should give you the best sense of both the teachers’ styles and the program’s operations. You want to avoid scheduling tours during food, nap, or outdoor playtime. While these are very important activities in a child care program’s operations you may not have a chance to observe teacher/child interactions during these times.
Usually, daycares will have a block of instruction time early in the morning after drop-off. They likely have another block in the afternoon after lunch and playtime. Aim to schedule your tour during one of these two times. You may get some pushback from the Director about scheduling a tour during these times because she may feel that it may be too intrusive. This is understandable. Her concern is for the well-being of the kids so she wants to minimize disruptions. You can reassure her that you will be quiet and out of the way. Additionally, using a checklist (as described below) to guide your tour experience means you won’t need to linger any longer than necessary.
Using a checklist for each tour
Print out the checklist for each program you tour. You’ll want to review it before your first tour so you can familiarize yourself with what to look for. Then observe. Depending on when you do your tour you likely won’t see all of the activities during the tour. If you don’t see all the activities, you can follow up with the Director in a meeting following the tour.
Make sure that you take any notes about red flags you see that aren’t listed on the checklist. At the most basic level, programs need to meet health and safety standards so you want to make sure that programs are doing this. Anything that seems to not meet basic standards should move a program into the ‘do not consider’ pile.
Bring your child care checklist to the tour. Make sure that the Director is available after the tour to answer any of your questions. You’ll want to make sure you take good notes. If you’re going on multiple tours it’s nice to have complete documentation so that you can compare after you’re all done. That said, don’t ignore your gut! Sometimes you’ll go to a program and it just won’t feel right. Those ‘feelings’ matter too when making your final decision about which program to choose.
What to look for on your tours
As you begin to tour programs you’ll start to get a sense of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ in what you’re seeing. Much of that will be obvious to you. However, there are also some red flags to be aware of that are maybe not so obvious. Be on the lookout for some of these as they are often indicators of daycare programs that are struggling with quality.
When looking for the good rather than the bad you’ll want to focus on the extra steps teachers take to support children. In particular, look to make sure that the teacher is providing emotional and academic support to children at all ages and stages.
You’ll also want to assess the state of the daycare classroom and whether it is organized. Are there different areas for the different parts of the day (play, learning, meals, rest)? Do you see evidence of age-appropriate toys and learning materials? Are teachers able to keep the class in a routine? Assessing each of these will give you insight into the orderliness of the daycare classroom on a day-to-day basis.
What to do after your tours are complete
Try to schedule all of your child care tours within a short timeframe or one or two weeks. This will allow you to have all of the tours fresh in your memory when you sit down to compare your checklists.
Compare the results of each checklist. The first way to narrow down the programs you’re considering is to eliminate any programs that didn’t meet your basic requirement. Certainly, if you observed a child care program that you felt didn’t meet basic health and safety you’ll want to strike that program off your list.
Compare the data for your remaining programs. Which programs scored highly and in which areas? You’ll likely find that each program had its own strengths and weaknesses. You’ll need to examine your values to decide which of those strengths are most important to you. If you value academics, a program with a strong implementation of its curriculum might be the winner. If you value physical activity, a program which an emphasis on outdoor programming might rise to the top.
There is no right or wrong answer as to which program to select. There are many wonderful child care programs out there and selecting the right one for you means identifying what you value most and finding the program that best can match your values.