Daycare Service

Although we all have our reasons for valuing daycare, you may feel even more grateful when you consider the limited choices parents of the past had. If you were a Native American mother in the 1800s you would have a choice of carrying your newborn baby in a sling you had woven, or strapping her to a cradle board. If you were living in the colonial days you could place him in a standing stool or strap him into a box-like contraption called a go-gin to keep him from wandering into the fireplace where you were preparing dinner.No matter what your life circumstances you had to pitch in to get work done so you would have had to improvise. Southern dirt farmers made use of wooden pegs driven into the soil for tethering children in place. Midwest farm wives placed babies in wood boxes attached to their plows. In one of the earliest forms of supervised daycare service, a white plantation wife kept an eye on black children playing in the kitchen yard while enslaved mothers picked cotton out in the fields. On other plantations, slave mothers cared for their owner's children, singing them to sleep while their own youngsters amused themselves.

If you lived in the city, your choices would have been even more dire- lock your child in your tenement apartment, or hope they'll be okay playing in the street while you worked all day. Older siblings often assumed the role of caretaker, at the loss of their own childhood. It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that formal and informal daycare services were cobbled into place, most of which were intended to care for immigrant, poor, and minority children of the poor.

Ironically it took the convergence of two dark eras, the Great Depression and World War II to infuse light and growth into daycare centers. One of FDR's lasting New Deal legacies was the creation of Emergency Nursery Schools, a WPA project with the dual intention of creating jobs for unemployed teachers while caring for children of parents employed in other WPA work relief programs. What separated these preschools from other daycare services of the day was the education they provided. And as the economy improved, they opened their doors to children of all economic classes.

Fast forward to today, when you're fortunate to have many choices of enriching daycare services. If you live in our vicinity of Rochester Minnesota, you're even more fortunate because our EPIC Endeavors Academy is the answer to your question "where can I find quality day care near me?" You'll find that our full time or part time preschool and after-school enrichment activities provide not only daycare, but daily opportunities for your child to learn, grow and rise to challenge.