First tour is tomorrow!

[preschoolteacher]

I've been MIA from this forum for awhile because we've been working so hard to get everything ready to open up this fall. My inspector says there are only 4 people ahead of me in line for inspection, so I'm hoping to be open by late September/early October.

I have five tours coming up--the first is tomorrow, and the rest are next week! All of the potential clients are friends-of-friends. Word of mouth has done me a lot of good. If everyone signs up with me, I will have full enrollment. Luckily, every family seems to be able to wait until I am open---the majority are in current daycare situations that they are unhappy with and would like to change, so I think most would be okay waiting until October for me to be licensed and are in no major rush.

I have a few questions for you experienced ones:
1. Every child coming over to tour is between 1.5-2.5 years old. My son is 1. I personally think this is a good thing--better to have them all close in age rather than a tiny baby with a few five year olds. Those with experience, do you agree?
2. How should I talk to the parents to find out why they want to leave their current daycare situations? I just want to make sure I can meet their expectations. I don't want to pry into their personal reasons for leaving, but I also want to make sure that we wouldn't have the same conflict here...

Thanks!

[MsLaura529]

I think it's great to have all similar ages ... it works well for planning curriculum and such.

You could always just ask them what they expect for their children from a daycare. I have that as a question on my parent survey sheet that I hand out.

Good luck!!!

[melilley]

I am licensed for 6 and all my kids are 2.5 and under (one is my own 1 year old) and it's not too bad most days. I have 6 enrolled. 2 days a week I have all 6 kids, 1 day I have 5 and 2 days I have 4 and to be honest, the days that I have all 6 can get pretty crazy! I do have a 22 month old who is like a tornado and one 11 mo. old who cries a lot, so that does make it frustrating sometimes.
I think that it all depends on the personalities of the children whether or not it gets frustrating having all the kids so close in age!

Also, mine all started around the same time (I just opened in January) and the 2 youngest were around 5 and 7 months old. The kids didn't bother the babies very much, but I constantly tell them that it's a rule at my house that you can't touch babies and even though all the kids are younger, they come to understand, eventually that they can't touch them. I honestly have not had any problems with the kids around the babies, even from my tornado child.