JWB said:
Ok, 2 questions...
2. Anyone have any suggestions for a great daycare for a 2.5 year old boy in Palermo?? We are looking for something part time (3 hours per day) AND most important, the flexibility to go for a few months without having to pay for an entire year.
Much love!
Regarding the daycare part of your question -- there's pretty much no way around paying the matriculation (initiation fee essentially). After that you'll have to pay your monthly regardless whether or not your child is attending or not -- ie I'm going home for a month in August and we still have to pay for the month of daycare. In theory if we were just happy to find a different daycare when I got back, we could just withdraw him and not pay August's fee. However then if I changed daycare's when we got back, we'd have to pay another matriculation fee -- and the matriculation as far as I remember from when we looked at daycares, are the same for the year regardless if your child starts in Sept or January. I'm not 100%.
Also you can pay for just X number of hours, but you have to pay for 5 days a week -- I pay for 6 hrs a day, 5 days a week, but if I don't want to send him one day I don't have to. It works out to about 12 pesos an hour though, much cheaper than a nanny.
However your child is 2.5 years old so you actually have a choice of sending them to a Jardin Maternal -- a preschool. I'm not sure if they can start at any time of year though, or if they have to start at the beginning of the school year. A daycare you'll be able to choose the hours you send them -- ie if you want to send your child for three hours from 11-2 everyday you can, but a Jardin Maternal will have a set programme. However they are only a few hours a day. (here you'll find comparison of Jardines v Guarderias
http://espanol.pregnancy-info.net/jardin_o_guarderia.html)
Which barrio are you in? We are in Las Canitas and needed a baby room -- yours is older so your criteria might be a bit different. We looked at 3 different ones and they all feel a bit Dickensian, but I think probably any daycare does when you're a first time parent sending your 6 mos old baby. One I didn't like the director, she had a crappy attitude. One we didn't like because it was in a very old building and the baby room was 2 floors up very steep stairs.
We went with Shailand Garden on Luis Maria Campos. The director is very nice, right when I met her I had a good feeling, and the rooms for the babies and younger children are all on the main floor so they don't have to climb up and down the stairs. There's a garden with some playground toys out back and they put in a large splash pool in the summers so that all the kids and babies have a turn with their class out in the water.
Most importantly for us is that our child seems really happy there -- when I drop him off and pick him up he's all smiles and the girls love him. They do a lot of different activities and he's definitely miles ahead of my friends' babies who are kept at home.
So without knowing your barrio it's hard to give a recommend for a particular daycare. In Las Canitas for instance there are not a lot of options for daycares, but once your reach 1 year old there are more schools and options out there.
A couple of general recommends though is to forget about getting the menu for your child -- you should plan on sending them with food if you have the time at all to make it -- the standard menu is really depressing -- pastas and cheese, milanesa, fish sticks, gelatine dessert etc. Check out the hygiene standards, a lot of the buildings are really old but you at least want to make sure they try to keep everything clean.
