Hellobee Boards

I'm about to do the same thing and my LO is the same age. Interested in responses.

1) hours?
2) caregiver to baby ratio
3) what is the plan for emergency exits and frequency of fire drills?
4) if you care - are cloth diapers allowed?
5) is food provided by the center once solids are started?
6) what is the educational background and experience of the providers? How long have they been working at the center?
7) what is a typical day like?
8) can you drop in at any time?

what is the sick policy?
hours?
holidays?
do they provide food?
years of experience?
references
child/teacher ratio?
security measures?

Agree with previous posters regarding years of experience, ratio and security measures! Some things that over time have become important to me are how many hours are the teachers working a day (can you imagine caring for 6 infants for 10 hours??), how much vacation do teachers get and how do they handle substitutes, the vibe/communication you get from the teachers, the teachers interaction/respect for each other (I think like a great marriage, you need teachers that are a well oiled machine), whether parent/teacher meetings are regularly held, how and when transitions to new rooms happen. I think it's important to give yourself a trial run too...when my son first started daycare I thought they were doing everything wrong and now I would love to have any of the teachers be our nanny (it's an employer run daycare though so the benefits and pay for our teachers are impossible to match)!

Other posters have given you great questions. We toured several daycares, asked all the important questions, but made our decision primarily based on gut feel (and we've been extremely happy with our decision). The school we chose just seemed like the best fit for our family (parenting style, etc). You'll know almost immediately if its someplace you'd feel comfortable leaving LO or not.

Regarding food - if the school serves food, ask for a weekly or monthly menu to determine if they are serving food you'd give to LO. Some of the schools that provide food for toddlers and up had menus that I wasn't comfortable with (too much processed food, not enough fruits/veggies). Its just not the way we feed LO at home, so that was a consideration too.

one thing i asked all daycares (n addition to the advice given above) was if i could send in bottles of breastmilk if needed - given that LO would be starting daycare at 18 months in a toddler program. some actually said no, so i ruled them out.

Also, if it wasn't already posted, i asked for a sample menu and a sample daily schedule. a couple of day cares had no schedule whatsoever to give me - said they don't follow one as it is all child-led. i personally preferred something a little more structured. the menus were always available online or posted on the wall and i took a camera pic so i could look at it later.

i also scanned the rooms for any obvious safety hazards - like are things tied to wall that need to be.

And i also scanned the rooms for to see if it was toddler appropriate, like were posters/toys/educational stuff on display at their eye level, etc. - i learned to scan for such things from a previous job i had where i evaluated early learning programs - we had to look at how the rooms were set up educationally and safety-wise.