An Eco-Friendly Experience

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About Tender Care San Diego

We recognize each child as an unique individual. We seek to provide the most appropriate learning experience for your child by creating an environment that is child-guided and developmentally based. Our program provides children with freedom of choice within structure, which encourages the development of problem-solving skills, self-reliance, and socialization. We believe that play is an important part of a child’s day. When children play, they construct their own knowledge of the world, physically, cognitively, socially, and this is the most meaningful type of knowledge. We strive to make our activities meaningful and fun. By observing how and what type of play the children are engaged in, this helps us determine the activities and experiences to offer the children.

Play In Nature

Our program is Eco-Friendly, so we want to emphasize the importance of children being outdoors so they can understand natural processes, become knowledgeable and appreciative of nature.

Some of the things children learn in nature are: Health and well-being, creativity, growth and development, community & sense of place, observation, questioning, listening skills, understanding of natural processes. For example, helping children to understand natural processes could be they plant a seed and it grows to be a vegetable, it will eventually die and then it gets composted. (A way to recycle!) For observation, it is great when the children will observe the humming birds, the ladybugs, the aphids, the butterflies, and the lizards in our gardens. (You can’t get that indoors!) And for questioning, they may ask if the caterpillar is going to turn into a moth or a butterfly? Or wanting to plant a seed they found to see if it will grow. ( How exciting when it grows!)

Physical Play

Physical movement is part of the foundation of mental and physical growth. Children need opportunities to walk, run, twist, jump, hop, skip, twirl, spin, hang upside down and right side up etc. This helps build the patterns for movement and physical skills which are laid down in the brain. Children need to be offered physical challenges as well as intellectual challenges. They need to take “risks” in the environment, that is not dangerous, but gives them challenges and helps them be engaged and learn from the world around them.

Eco-Friendly

Tender Care has raised organic garden beds and organic fruit trees. We compost our food scraps in compost bins and through vermicomposting. We also do rainwater harvesting, and use greywater for our trees. We encourage the children to enjoy nature and we try to model positive, earth, water, and air conservation and responsibility. We qualify as an Eco-Healthy Child Care through the Children’s Environmental Health Network. And we have off set our carbon footprint by going solar. Our carbon offset for one of the month’s was 1,734 lbs, which has offset the equivalent of 20 trees.

Healthy Snacks and Meals

The children help with preparing meals such as cutting up the ingredients for a salad bar, or help mix and measure the Black Bean soup ingredients. They may pick some basil from our garden to put on the whole wheat pizza. Some of our organic garden harvests have been; broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, nectarines, tomatoes, peaches, carrots, blackberries, pole runner beans, dinosaur kale, artichokes, brussel sprouts, cucumbers, strawberries, passion fruit, and apples! We provide whole foods that are minimally processed and mostly organic, and strive to follow the the Environmental Working Group, “Shoppers Guide To Pesticides in Produce.” When we use animal products we look for the “humanely treated/raised” products. The snacks and Meals are served family style. The children put any left over food on their plate in the food scrap container for composting and place their dishes in the dishwasher. After lunch they brush their teeth.

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Happy Parents

If you are looking for a quality Family Child Care, Tender Care is your goldmine! This provider is a gift to all children that attend and will offer all parents ease of mind with the quality of service. That is a promise!

Summer

Happy Parent

Oh ‘Tender Care” how do I love thee? Let me count the ways… To put it simply, Judy, Randy and Ana at ‘Tender Care’ run the best quality child care I have ever seen. I call it a child care, but make no mistake; it is structured more like a preschool. Judy strongly believes that even the most mundane daily processes are a valuable opportunity to learn.

The McGees

Happy Parents

I can’t believe that four years has gone by since Zack first began attending Tender Care. I guess time really does fly by when you’re having fun! I have a very heavy heart because today is Zack’s last official day at Tender Care before going off to Kindergarten. I can’t believe he has been attending your child care since he was one year old…and that he is now five! Zack is going on to Kindergarten and he says, “I’m not ready grow up…I want to stay at Judy and Randy’s!

Corrie, Nathan and Zack

Happy Parent

At Tendercare, they go on daily adventures, they garden, dance, read, write, draw, sing, play, you name it. They’re just allowed to be kids. In turn, Judy and Randy became like adopted grandparents, I cannot express enough how thankful I am to have them in our lives.

Megan C.

Happy Parent

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