How's daycare where you live?

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I will tell you about how we chose day care for our older girls and a bit about day care in SWEDEN in general. First of all we have 390 days of maternity leave here in Sweden 195 days for the mother and 195 days for the father – you can “give” all days except 60 to the other parent. These days we get 80% of our regular income (there’s a highest level that I can’t come up with now – but it’s pretty high). Every child has the right to get day care after the age of 1 here in Sweden. Even children to unemployed are guaranteed 15 hours of day care a week. The same goes for children that have a parent on maternity leave with another child. Day care is from age 1-5 the year the child turns 6 they start school in the autumn. All day care in Sweden are under supervision from the state and they are often provided by the “kommun” – sort of town community. In our “kommun” most children go to day cares with a group of 20 children and 3-4 teachers (they have studied for 3 years at the college/university to become kinder garden teachers - now the education is for 3,5 year). There are one, two or several groups at every day care. There is also day care in a care provider’s home where it’s about 4 children. The community also employs these. There are private day cares as well, but they get the same money from the community for every child that the day cares the community provides. In our small “kommun” – just over 40.000 people spread over a area about 2500square km we can choose different kinds of day care – most of them are just regular day cares, but we have Montessori, Emilia Reggio, music and I Ur & Skur (means they spend much time outside even if the weather isn’t the best). What we pay? In Sweden there is a thing called “maxtaxa” – which means there is a highest level for what you’ll have to pay. For two children in day care (full time – can be 50 hours a week each child) the highest amount you will pay is 1917 skr (Swedish Kronor) / month about $180. For one child it’s about 1200 skr ($115). When our girls was 18 months and almost 3 years old, we decided that we should put them into day care – I was studying full time from home and working 10h/week, my husband was studying fulltime, we started to visit different day cares, but didn’t find any that we really liked, after a few weeks we decided that we would try to get them in at the “I Ur & Skur” day care a teacher cooperative, that spends much time outside, we knew that children at these day cares around Sweden were much healthier that children in ordinary day cares and since our children loves being outside it was something we could try. The problem was, as we knew, that there are so many parents that want their children to go to this day care. Luckily we got our older girl in and decided that she would start in the middle of August that year even if the younger one couldn’t get in there. We visited the day care and a few days later Sofia was accepted and we liked the place a lot. The staff was 5 kindergarten teachers (one male) and one woman that cooks and cleans and there were 20 children. They are all very nice and have worked there for years I guess the newest of them has been there for 4 years or so. In the end of June they called and said that also Lovisa had gotten accepted so they were both in. The children are in groups the oldest (the year tehy turn 5) are Mullebarn – they learn down hill skiing, they go for daytrips, preparing lunch and so on outside, they ski (cross country) and they ice skate. The ones born 3-4 are Knyttar – they are cross-country skiing and ice-skating in the winter and go for half day trips and sometimes eats lunch outside. The smallest ones born aged 2 are Knoppar and they ice-skate and go for short trips like an hour or so, and they are sleeping in their strollers outside all year. They seldom take children younger than 2 years old. They spend much time outside and in the summer they almost never goes inside – even the lunch is eaten outside. They climb trees, jumps of rocks and they are always having a great time. Making fires, learning about how to behave in the woods, at sea and so on. Have my children been healthy – yes, they have, only a couple of mild colds since during their time at day care, a dream for a parent of a toddler! We are very pleased with the choice we made even if we lived far from the day care (30km one way) it’s worth it – and since my husband worked 5 km from the daycare it works. Our children went to day care 3-4 days a week for about 9 hours every day and it is very long days, but they didn't complain – they don’t want to leave when we’re picking them up. The most important is that you like the people that work there and that the environment is safe. Now with our third we made a different choice, but still wanted a day care that spends much time outside and let the children sleep outside. But it's a bigger day care and has mainly small children and shehas been way more sick than the other two. It would be nice to hear about day care where you live!