Ashton Daycare & Learning Center, Silver Spring

Ashton Daycare & Learning Center is a home-based daycare and preschool located near Woodlawn Park and the Northwest Branch Stream Valley Park, in the Ashton Manor neighborhood of Silver Spring, MD. We are NAFCC-accredited, MSDE-accredited Level 5 and we are dedicated to providing high quality child care and early childhood education. I am the proud director and I am a mother of 3 with 10 years of child care experience as well as a Master's Degree In Economics! Our hours of operation are 6:00a.m. to 6:00p.m. but we can offer flexible hours if it's important to you. We offer full time and part-time child care, as well as drop-in care, summer camp, and private Kindergarten. We believe that each child and family is unique and parents are encouraged to be involved in our program. We promote partnership through daily communication, and we observe and respect the cultural traditions of each family. We strive to develop a relationship that builds mutual trust, and we believe each child is a precious gift so we treat them as though they were our own! We understand the importance of a child’s early years: birth to five is a crucial and amazing time of growth and learning. Our ratio of children to adults is always within state guidelines for family child care programs, and often lower. You can rest assured that your child will be cared for with love and respect. Since your day to day responsibilities can keep you away from your kids, we nurture and care for your little ones.

Our daycare is like a big family; siblings can be together, and we are like an extension of their own family. We work in mixed-age group settings, which provides a family-like atmosphere for our kids. Research has shown that children often learn better from other children rather than adults. In our care, older students are nurture and guide younger ones in a controlled setting, and help teach language and social skills to them. They are also allowed to visit past levels of development, as children need to go back to skills mastered earlier even as they are busy trying new things, so they don’t forget what they’ve learned. Our number of children is limited so we can work with every child’s interest, as well as feeding, diapering and catering to their other needs. All children are allowed to grow and develop at their own pace. A smaller number of children provides for less competition and more cooperation which is the base of our program. In our family child care setting, children remain with the same caregiver for a longer period of time, which provides continuity and stability for each child to establish a bond with the caregiver, and allows the teacher to better understand and nurture each child.

Our daily activities include the basics such as, colors, shapes, opposites, numbers and letters. We also do arts and crafts such as painting, coloring, drawing, painting with rubber stamps, collages, sticker arts, molding with clay and play doh. When the weather is nice, we enjoy playing basketball, riding a bicycle, and other games in the playground. We also enjoy catching butterflies in the garden! We play games that encourage hand-eye coordination, read stories, working in a playing kitchen and house-keeping area. Child care cannot be a fulfilling experience until you have complete confidence and trust in your child’s caregiver. We understand that each child’s learning style is different and unique, and in our care, he/she will reach her potential in a truly loving, caring and healthy environment. We also provide a healthy learning environment for our kids and have achieved the Asthma Friendly Child Care certification by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.