Tots 'N' Toyland

We are excited to announce our first official Meet & Greet next Wednesday February 7, 2018 between 5pm and 9pm. Please bring everyone you know, this flyer and your children and come meet Mrs. Erica, Ms. Rose and Ms. Reina. We will have goodies for the children and a ton of information for the families. Please help support us get this off to the best start possible. We thank you so much!

Question: In the classrooms that have 10 children, will there be only one teacher? Is the visibility made possible by half walls? I ask with the best intentions. I know you have the highest standards, and maybe I can help avoid some pitfalls I have seen in the 20+ centers I've worked in   :)   exciting developments!!! Answer:  Thank you so much for the question. The only classrooms that are a 1:10 ratio are the preschool and kindergarten classrooms; which are ages 3-5. All other rooms have 2 or more teachers. We have arranged those classrooms together in a quadrant; and the walls will be completely see through. So, even though there will be 1 teacher caring for her group of 10, there will be visibility from 3 other teachers. I have included a picture of the proposed walls. In addition, there will be free flowing openings between those rooms because we intend on moving the children through the entire space of 4 rooms each day. There will also be an entire closed circui...

Floor plan is etched out!! Woohoo. All classrooms will have 10 children or less, aside from one infant room that will hold 12. Some extra bucks for all of these rooms, but the experience for the children will be well worth it. Also, their are virtually no hallways and almost complete visibility from every room to another. Much better for an emergency evacuation. I have placed all of the infant and toddler rooms directly next to an exit door for immediate egress. We have also confirmed with the health dept and the building official that we can have our kitchen on site. That means complete control over the food. Which will be organic like I wanted! And.... the opening might be in May!!!!

Hello Everyone! This newsletter is reflective of what we are hoping to find in our caregivers. Our teachers will be the most important part of this expansion and for the children. This is a long one so without further ado… Physical, Mental and Health Characteristics   • Maintains good health and i s personally clean and appropriately groomed • Has a high energy level, is very active • Does not use alcohol, drugs, or take medication that will affect responsiveness to children • Can lift children weighing up to 50 pounds , get on the floor , get up quickly  and run and play with children • Is attentive and always alert to the children and what they are doing in the environment • Can work with and supervise children doing different things at the same time Social Characteristics   • Enjoys working with  and is courteous to  children and their families ; enjoys learning and helping others to learn and solve problems   • Respects chil...

Dear Families, We have officially finalized negotiations on our new location! We will be moving to 167 Massanetta Springs Road, Harrisonburg, VA 22801. We are feverishly working with the architect and builder to get this project done in time. Over the next few months, we will be building the interior classrooms and playground. We will also begin hiring staff around March. We plan to hold a few events before opening day in order to meet everyone and answer questions, raise funds, enroll new children and gather information and preferences from you. This entire operation is for you, so please let us know how we can make this the best it can be for your families. We have had a number of parents asking to vist our current classroom. While we would love to show you and we normally would, with the volume of requests being made, it would simply be too disruptive to our current children's curriculum. To remedy this, we are planning to host a "Meet and Greet" at a local venue, so f...

We are offering a small Kindergarten class at the new center. Some of our children that are currently in care will remain with us and we are looking to add a few additional parents who may be in need of this. We are accepting enrollment for that class in an extremely limited quantity. If you would like to have your child with us for their Kindergarten year, please let me know.

Here is a look at our work up for a 7:30am open. This creates primarily full-time employment. We are actively working a separate spreadsheet to attempt to accommodate a 7am open without adding too many part-time positions.

Dear Parents, We are finalizing our operating hours and we need your input. Our closing time is set at 6pm and we will likely not alter that. However, we have mixed reviews on our planned opening time. Child care is no good if it isn't open in time for you to make it to work. So, we are taking a poll to see what your preferences are. Open at 7:00AM or 7:30AM? Things to consider - The earlier we open, the longer the teachers must be present. Longer hours for teachers means diminished quality of care, no matter how amazing they are. In order to mitigate long hours, we would have to replace those full time workers with part time teachers. That would be two employees working half a day, rather than only one. That's more transitioning for our children and more opportunity for turnover. It also creates less stability and a higher likelihood of a teacher to move onto a full time position somewhere else. We want the highest quality we can find and would prefer to have primarily full ti...

Parent Question: Are you going to be religious-based? Answer: We will not be teaching a specific religious-based curriculum. We will not be religious exempt either. However, we will be promoting respect, honesty, purposefulness, confidence and positive behavior, manners and independence. We are leading our children by example in action here at "school" and allowing the parents the freedom to correspond that message to where they believe it is derived.

Parent Questions: 1. Regarding the preschool curriculum - Will children/parents have to request and stick to one of those themed rooms their entire preschool time there? Answer: No. We are planning to move the children through each room, everyday. That will give them a variety of experiences and have an opportunity to explore things they may not have initially considered. We will allow the children the freedom to choose where to spend the majority of their time and we will listen to what parents wish for their children and modify the routine accordingly. 2. Regarding the infant rooms - Will each room have the full age range of 6 weeks to 15 months? Answer: No, probably not. We will have a total of 3 infant rooms consisting of 8 children each. That is 24 children under the age of 15 months. With that number, we will be able to pair the children up with peers that are close in age. We will likely have babies who are 6 months and under in one room, 6 months to crawling in another r...

Preschool Curriculum Structure We will have 4 classrooms with children ages 3-5 years. These classrooms will be named and structured as follows: Discovery - This classroom is designed for children who prefer to engage in dramatic play, gross motor play, and sensory based activities. There may be a slide, a swing, a balance beam, a tunnel.... the limits are endless! Build with Me - This classroom will house all of our building materials including wood blocks, legos, mega blocks, gears, foam blocks, lincoln logs, bristle blocks, tinker toys, car tracks, trains and so much more! Let's Learn ABC's - This classroom will focus on early learning of colors, letters, numbers, sounds, blends, rhyming, counting, weather, calendar, and shapes. We will primarily teach the Kindergarten prerequisites in this classroom. There will be board games, directional games, vocabulary building games....I could just go on and on :) Play With Me - This room is focused exclusively on socializatio...

Part-Time Care Parents, we are planning to offer part-time care. We are also hoping to be able to work that care around where your days can be what you set, and not the other way around. However, part-time care must be worked in-line with another parents schedule; so there may be some creative maneuvering. We are going to do our best to make each parents schedule work for them. Part-time days will not be able to change each week, but rather be the same, even though the parent can choose what they are.

Newsletter #2 January, 1 6 , 2017 Hello Everyone! I hope you were pleased with our first newsletter detailing the basics. In this letter I am going to cover some finer details regarding our philosophies on certain aspects and hopefully answer some questions for the group that have been raised by our parents. Lets go! Classroom Size and Children-to-Teacher Ratio One of the most common complaints we hear from parents and one of the biggest challenges we see for children is having a classroom size with too many children. Having a large group together in one room is overwhelming for the teachers; and produces an over-stimulated environment for the children. It doesn ’ t allow for individual attention, cohesion within activities, or adequate down time for a child who may need a break from all of the stimuli that comes with peer play. It creates a dizzying environment of poor supervision; and in a best-case scenario, controlled chaos. We believe in a small class setting. It ’ s ...

Hello Everyone!   First let me say, Thank you to all of you who have supported us, inquired with us, spoken kind words about us, and allowed your children to be in our care. It has been a wonderful three and a half years and we are super excited to announce the expansion of our business! Below you will find some basic information about the new center. This newsletter will barely scratch the surface of things to come; but the response has been overwhelming and I didn’t want to keep you waiting any longer. We are hoping to open the new center by June or July of this year! Meet Our Directors - Yes, there will be three of us because quality childcare starts at the top! My name is Erica Dorsey  and I started Tots ‘N Toyland in June of 2014. I am in my thirties, a mother of three children, and I bring thirteen years of experience to our team. I hold a CDA Credential in childcare; I am a nationally registered EMT with expertise in childhood safety and life-saving t...