WE'RE FINALLY UP AND RUNNING!

Did you all give up on us blogging? Life has been crazy. After a big ribbon cutting ceremony with the governor and an all day open house on May 29th, we opened for business on June 1, 2009. We have received several truckloads of furnishings and had some wonderful help from friends and members of the student branch in unpacking and putting everything in the right room. Things are running more smoothly each day. This is our 4/5 age room. The kids have named it the "castle room" because of the big loft. You can see that each room has a carpeted area and a "wet and messy" area with easy-to-clean floors. We also put bulletin boards in each room to display the children's creations. Most of the classrooms also have a "sand and water sensory table" to put different things in

for the children to play with. There is also a painting easel and a handwashing sink on each of the wet areas of the rooms. This shows some of the "tummy time" activities that we have in the baby room. Each infant will have its own crib and developmentally appropriate activities to do. We are trying to avoid swings, vibrating bouncers, etc. in order for the babies to have more time being held and interacted with. We have four rocking chairs and lots of fun books and sensory toys and activities. We didn't put any carpet in the infant room so it would be easier to sanitize it. We use mats under the activities to make a soft playing surface.

This shows our wonderful "blowout sink" in the infant room. It got used for the first time today when our first set of twins (10 months old) had diaper blowouts at the exact same time. Weird huh? (We are getting another set of 7 month old twins on July 1st) They both fell asleep at the same time and then woke up 15 minutes later crying. They had both had very messy bowel movements. The little girl loved her "bath" in our super sink. There is baby bath soap in the soap dispenser at this sink.

This pic shows the "mobile" side of our infant room. We keep the mobile infants separate from the nonmobile ones. Notice the low "cruising" type of shelves which encourage the babies to get up and walk around the furnishings. My granddaughter, Celeste, loves this room.

Here is a sample of the "dramatic play house" that we have in each room except the infant room. We invested in some Community Playthings furniture which is Amish made and very durable. It is quite expensive but usually worth the extra money.

This is part of our toddler "potty training" bathroom. It has three child size toilets and some very low sinks that the children can use without help.

Our "super room" is one of the favorites in the building. On all of these rainy days, it has been good to let the children come in and run around and ride our indoor ride-on toys. The school-age children love to come in and play dodge ball. The basketball hoop came in today but is not yet installed. I'm sure it will also be a hit.
This is one of our two custodial closets. This one also has our washer and dryer and two of the three water heaters. The big 100 gallon water heater is to service our kitchen. Then we have two Rennai water heaters which service the classrooms and are set at 120 degrees and will never allow the water to get hot enough to scald a child.
We also have two of these wonderful storage rooms which will allow us to rotate toys and equipment. I wish I had one of these in my home.

We have had about 30 children each day since we opened. We are signing up new kids each day. Dee will be glad when it fills up so he won't have to worry about paying all of the bills. People have been very complimentary and are "spreading the word". I fear that we are being cursed by some other childcare centers and child care homes for "stealing" their clients though. I really think there are plenty of children to go around though. We are just going to be the best that we can be and I'm sure the business will take care of itself. We have some excellent employees and are very pleased with their work and dedication. Thanks for reading and for all of your encouraging words.