Child care can help parents go to school, return to work, and find time to care for themselves. As a parent, it's natural to feel anxious at the prospect of leaving your young child somewhere else for several hours. However, daycare centers provide all the enrichment and supervision that kids need to thrive. Finding the right daycare for your family will depend on several different factors. Here are three of the things you should take into consideration when making your selection:

1. Class Size

Class size is important at every level of education. However, it is especially vital for young children to be in small classes where adults can adequately supervise them. When choosing a daycare center, ask questions about class sizes and the number of daycare teachers on staff at any given time. This will allow you to make sure that your child will have access to the personal, one-on-one attention they need to learn and thrive. As a rule of thumb, the younger children are, the greater the ratio of adults to children should be.

2. Location

Even an otherwise ideal daycare center may not be the best fit for your family if it is located in an inconvenient place. Ideally, the child care provider you choose should fit seamlessly into your daily routine. Selecting a daycare center that is close to your house, university, or office will make it easy to drop your child off and pick them up on your way to school or work. Close proximity will also allow you to quickly make your way to the daycare center in the unlikely event that your child has an emergency of some kind.

3. Educational Philosophy

Finally, you should take prospective daycare centers' educational philosophies into account. The primary responsibility of a daycare center is to provide child care for kids. However, that doesn't mean that kids can't learn and grow during their time at daycare. Daycare centers that utilize the Montessori philosophy, for example, believe that kids thrive when allowed to engage in self-directed learning. By mingling with children younger and older than them and participating in a myriad of hands-on activities, kids who attend Montessori daycare centers will be able to learn life skills and lessons that can serve as a foundation for the rest of their intellectual growth.

For more information about finding a daycare that fits your needs, contact a local facility.