Daycare Deals

Today's Groupon is an amazaing deal! $10 for $20 Worth of Make-Your-Own-Bears or $25 for $50 Toward Any Build-A-Party Celebration at Build-A-Bear Workshop.

The $20 option expires 12-31-10, so this would make for perfect Chrismas presents.
The party option expires 3-31-10.

This Groupon can be purchased all weekend!

I was working before I had my daughter, so I had to make the decision about whether or not to stay at home with her or go to work and find her a daycare. I did choose to stay home with her, and it was a great decision for me. I also chose to start an in-home daycare so that she could have friends. These are some advantages to home daycares:

1. Individualized Attention: Groups in home daycares are usually smaller than groups of children in center daycares. So, children in home daycares will likely get more one-on-one attention. (I only have 6 kids at the most, so I can spend more time with each child.)

2. Stable Environment: Children in home daycares will likely stay with the same provider throughout infancy, toddler stages, and preschool ages. They might even stay through some of their school years. This allows children in home daycares to develop deep, meaningful relationships with their caregivers and the other children. (It is hard when one of my daycare kids leaves due to job changes or moves to another state because I truly develop a relationship with my daycare kids. I know what foods he/she likes, when he/she naps, the coloring book he/she prefers, etc)

3. Flexibility: Daycare homes are more flexible with drop off and pick up times than center daycares. (I'm really flexible on the times with my parents.)

4. Cost: Daycare homes are generally cheaper than centers. Daycare homes don't have to worry about paying for buildings or employees, so caregivers can charge less. (My rates are less than centers in Wichita)

5. Development: Watching other children move and play causes younger children to want to emulate them.

*I know that my daughter is happy in a home daycare environment. As she has grown from an infant, she's watched the older kids walk, run, jump, and climb. She's now emulating them because she wants to do what she has seen them do. This also happened with my youngest in care (10 months). Before starting care at my house, she wasn't even scooting. After the first day, she was starting to pull herself around my carpet. Now, she crawls everywhere. My home daycare also allows my daughter to have friends. She loves when her friends are over here; she shrieks with glee when I carry her out of her room every morning!

The information in this post is based on "Advantages of Placing Kids in Home Daycare: Benefits of Family Childcare Programs for Kids" by Charlina Stewart. Obviously, I did throw in my own comments and thoughts as well.

I enjoyed attending Vacation Bible School at my grandparents' chuch when I was a kid, so I thought I'd post about a Vacation Bible School opportunity.

Pleasant Valley United Methodist Church is offering a Vacation Bible School from July 12th-16th. The time is 9am-12:30pm.  You can register for this opportunity here. The church is located at 25th and Amidon. *I'm not sure if there is a charge for this or not because I'm a member of a different church.  I do know the pastor of this church though; he is the dad of a former daycare child.

If you know of any other kid activities, please comment or email me at daycaredeals@gmail.com so that I can post about them.

ADT is offering a free Child Safety ID kit. This contains fingerprinting tools and games for teaching child safety. You may request 1 kit for each child in your home under 14.

My daycare children love to play with sidewalk chalk. I have one who will write and draw for most of the time we're outside. So, I was happy to come acrosss this sidewalk paint recipe. I think my daycare children would love to help make their own.

Sidewalk Paint Recipe:


Mix the cornstarch with enough cold water to make a paintable consistency.

Separate into smaller batches

Add a couple of teaspoons of tempera paint to reach desired color.

Mix the paint into your batch.

Let children have fun painting the sidewalk, patio, or driveway.

Make this cool Mr. Egghead for Dad for Father's Day or one of the other 101 Father's Day craft ideas found here. Sign up for the newsletter to get access to over 1000 craft ideas. Bonus: Free 95-page "Creative Crafting All Year Round Holiday" eBookClick Here

Helping preschoolers learn about social skills just got a little bit easier and a lot more fun. Noodleboro games let you nurture kids' social skills naturally through multi-sensory play that leaves everyone laughing!

Learn about Manners in this Picnic basket preschool game where good fun makes great kids! Its hard to have a perfect picnic party when the ants keep trying to steal your food! Just say "please" and "thank you" to send those pesky ants packing and collect

Rachel refuses to use manners at the picnic with her friends. Read the book to see what happens when her big wish comes true and ends up making her feel "small"

Three ways to reinforce social skills! Play the CD to get kids laughing, singing and sharing with a story and silly songs from Noodleboro's all-kid radio station!

This offer is for people with a TD Bank. Locations are throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Metro D.C., and Florida.

TD Bank is offering $10 to be placed into your child's Young Savers account when they read 10 books this summer. Find out more information here.

As a former English teacher, reading is something I enjoy and promote. So, I was excited to hear about another Summer Reading Club. H E Buddy is offering a free H E Buddy t-shirt for kids who read 10 books this summer and mail in the form by October 1st. Find a flyer with more information here.

Find out about the other summer reading programs here.

In addition to the Wichita Public Library's Summer Reading Program, both Borders and Barnes and Noble are holding summer reading programs for kids. (These two new programs are only for 12 and under though; Wichita does a program for teens called Teens Read). Here is some information on both programs, which give away free books.

Barnes and Noble: Kids 3-12 read any 8 books while keeping track on them with the Passport to Summer Reading (available to download on B&N's site). After reading and tracking 8 books, each child will get to choose a free book from B&N's list. Find more informaion about this program here. Make sure to turn in the passport between May 25th-September 7th.


Borders: Borders Double Dog Dares kids 12 and under to read any 10 books and write them in on Border's Summer Reading form (available on Border's site). After reading and filling in the form, turn in the form to any Border's location by August 26th to receive a free book. The books to choose from are shown on the page about the program. They range from "Ramona the Brave" to "Hoot" to "Babysitter's Club". Find out more about this program here.

Getting your kids to eat vegetables might be as simple as giving them more?

A new article title "The Trick to Getting Kids to Eat Their Vegetables" by Jeannine Stein tracked children's eating habits in a daycare. The data showed that giving double the amount of carrots increased the amount of carrots that children ate.

My Take: Good ways to get your child(ren) interested in vegetables depend on you modeling behavior by munching yourself and leaving out vegetables for your kids to munch.

My Daycare: Kids like ranch. Luckily, ranch comes in light and free varieties. I serve a spinach salad to my daycare kids around twice a week. Amazingly enough, they like fresh spinach more than they like romaine lettuce. The children in my care do eat the spinach, but sometimes I have to use more creative ways of making it cool (especially if I'm serving it with chicken nuggets). At times, I serve a salad first before the rest of the meal. This makes it like when Mommy and Daddy go out to a restaurant, so the kids like that. They always eat more salad when I serve it first. Linking to the article, I only have to serve a total of 1/4cup of vegetable/fruit for lunch to my 2-year-olds. I serve at least 1/4 cup each of a vegetable and fruit for lunch. I also make sure that I always serve both a vegetable and fruit; I never serve two fruits. It's been a slow process with some of my daycare children as to eating their vegetables, but yesterday all of them ate all their green beans.

My Vegetable Experience: I'm very big into getting my daughter to eat vegetables because I was a horrible eater. Before marrying my husband, I ate carrots and broccoli and hated peppers. Now, we eat peppers with almost every meal and green beans frequently. We even planted a garden this year. I try to model vegetable eating with my daughter, and it's working. I'll cut up a pepper to munch on throughout the day, and she'll come ask for some of it. The most amazing part--my daughter just turned 1 and has no teeth! Yet, she loves peppers. I give her really small pieces, and she gobbles them! Can anyone tell me how she can eat so well with no teeth? That's a bigger mystery to me than getting her to eat vegetables!

For the article, which was published in the May 1st issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, click on this link: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/05/children-vegetables-carrots-eating-more.html