About Comox Kidz
Our Philosophy
We believe that parents are the primary influence in a childs life. The daycare should enhance and not substitute, replace or conflict with the primary parenting influences. We will make every effort to be sensitive and to support the culture of the families.
We believe that all children are uniquely valuable and should be treated with respect and dignity by other children and by adults in the world around them. They should also be encouraged to respect the rights of others.
In addition, the daycare center should provide a safe, secure environment which fosters a positive self image in each child. We believe each child should experience feelings of success and accomplishment on a daily basis by participating in a program in which the environment and activities are planned with the developmental needs and abilities of each child in mind. We believe that caregivers must be knowledgeable of child development and to be sensitive to those needs.
We believe that a child learns and makes sense of the world through play. Thus a childs play should be respected and held in the highest regard.
The early years are critical years developmentally,intellectually, socially and psychologically as well as physically. We are committed to the opinion that this development can be optimized only by a caring, nurturing, and stimulating environment.
This is a little bit about us and our family.
We moved to the Comox Valley in August 2003, from Vernon in the Okanagan. We love the ocean and we are enjoying living here on the Island. We both grew up on the ocean and we have been inland too long, we want our children to have the opportunity to enjoy the ocean like we did. Over the years we have visited the Island every Summer and this is where our hearts are, and we are finally making it our home.
We moved to Vernon from Canmore Alberta in 1998. In Canmore we owned a pet store, Amazon Pets. Our favorite part of our work there was taking the pets to schools and daycares to do educational shows. We also worked along with the schools in the 'work program' where the kids would come to the pet store and we would teach them 'the ropes' of how to take care of the animals and other responsibilities at places of work. When we moved to Vernon we decided to look into opening our own family daycare. We took 2 years to plan it and we successfully opened in 2000, and after 1 year we became fully licenced.
We chose to be licenced so that we could provide the best possible care for the children in our home. To be licenced you have to maintain a safe and clean environment, and have a child friendly curriculum. We also had to have a minimum of 24 hours in childcare training, and we have to continue to meet a certain level of training each year to maintain our licence. The first year we recieved a temporary permit every three months, we were inspected thouroughly during this time and had to meet the level expected by the government before we could get our next temporary permit. After successfully meeting the high requirements by the licencing officers for a full year we were given a permanent daycare licence. We still have to recieve regular training each year, and we recieve spot checks by our licencing officer on a regular basis.
This keeps us on our toes, and helps us a great deal in maintaing a high level of child care that parents expect for their children.
Some of the Requirements to hold a childcare licence are:
Bathrooms must be cleaned every day.
One sleeping mat per child must be provided and must be cleaned every day.
Each child must have their own towel.
We must provide liquid hand soap not a soap bar.
All babies toys must be cleaned each week.
All other toys must be cleaned each month.
All chemicals and medications must be locked up.
We wash the kids hands before and after each meal.
All food surfaces must be sanatized before and after each meal.
Healthy snacks are to be provided each day.
We can only have a maximum of 7 children under our care under the age of 12
Only 1 under 1 yr, 3 under 3yrs, 5 under 5yrs.
We must each have a valid child safe first aid certificate, and we are to take a first aid kit with us everywhere we go.
We are to have an evacuation kit on the premisis.
Fire extinguishers on each level.
Our smoke dectors had to be hard wired.
We have regular fire drills.
We had a fire safety inspection before we opened, and we get our extinguishers recharged each year.
All toys that are too small for under three year olds have to be kept out of their reach.
All outdoor play areas must be fenced in.
All outdoor climbing toys, swings, slides etc. must have at least one foot of sand or other low impact material, at least six feet around them.
All toys etc. must be kept in good repair, and be supervised properly.
We have to have at least 1 adult to 3-4 children on our walks or at the park.
These are some of the requirements that we have to maintain to keep our licence.
We enjoy keeping up with these standards and would fully expect the same care for our own children. We look forward to our licencing officer's spot checks to help us to improve where we may need it