Woodland Park Children's Corner, Herndon

Our daughter has been going to this daycare since she turned 1 and has been going here for about 9 months now. This is the best daycare we have ever sent our daughter to and always feel at peace leaving her in the hands of the provider while we work. Our daughter is always so happy every time she sees the provider and the other children. The provider not only just cares for the children, but for the parents as well. She always checks on how my husband and I are doing and truly just feels like a part of our family. We love her!

My son has been here since he was 6 months and we absolutely love this daycare! The provider is great with children and teaches them very well. We are so happy about how much our son has learned there. She caters well to the children’s needs and has created a very safe environment for all the children in her care. My son loves to be there. Her support has been greatly appreciated!

Started my infant son here at 3 months old and it's been a great experience! Starting from the initial interview that we had with the owner, we felt very comfortable with her caring for our child. She is very knowledgeable and creates a safe, nurturing environment for every child in her care. Not only have we experienced this ourselves, but it was also evident in the preliminary calls we had with other parent references; everyone had only good things to say about her Child Care. We were extremely lucky that she had an available spot for our infant!

My daycare provider, whom I *love*, runs an in-home daycare from her townhouse in the Woodland Park development right across the street from the Harris Teeter on Sunrise Valley. I started bringing my son to her when he was a month old and kept him there until he went to kindergarten. She has 30 years experience running her own daycare. She only does ages 0-5 and has no more than 5 kids at once. (Daycares run on a point system: babies have high point values and point values drop as kids get older, so 1 provider without an assistant can only have a couple of infants or more older children…) She’s also does (or at least used to do) “Sunday school”/daycare for her mosque and has such a good reputation that anytime a big Muslim conference is held in DC, she would be the only one asked to coordinate childcare. (Events only happened on weekends, so it didn’t conflict with her schedule; in fact, in 5 years she never took a sick day and took only 1 vacation day). She’s also always taking classes and getting new certificates in child development and was recommended by the county as a top provider to take part in additional special teaching seminars. In short, she’s very experienced. She was great about coordinating with me as a parent and regularly touches base with me on where my son fell on the development spectrum for his age, to see if we are seeing him use the same skills and behaviors at daycare and home, and decide if there are certain skills we want to focus on with him. She was also excellent about communicating what goes on with my son each day and tried to make sure that she and I were a team, reinforcing each others patterns so that he didn’t get 2 different messages. She also passes along interesting articles on kids, development, etc. that she receives in her classes. If I ever had concerns that she couldn’t answer, she consulted with other daycare providers or her mentors for ideas. I clicked with her right off the bat because we have identical styles of “parenting.” E.g., I wanted him to have more of a scheduled/routine day, not just open play all the time. She runs her program like a kindergarten, breaking the day (and the room physically) into blocks/stations for directed play, reading, music/art and open play. I was also against having TV and she was on the same page with that. She also makes sure that the kids get outside every day, weather permitting, and takes them on little outings to the farmers market or the Reston zoo occasionally. She teaches the kids yoga, stretching and calisthenics – it’s really cute. And she has a little side garden where the kids help her with plants and veggies. When I interviewed her, I also got to me 2 of her children (she has 5). All her kids are so polite and smart that it gave me confidence. I also really appreciate the cultural diversity she brings. She is from Grenada and her husband from Trinidad, both are converts to Islam and practicing Muslims but really down to earth about it. She loves telling stories about growing up in the Caribbean. She likes to incorporate games and songs she played growing up and showing the kids unusual tropical fruits at the market, does a lot of things with world music, etc. She tends to keep kids for a long time (parents who’ve used her before always seem to come back with their newborns), which is a positive sign but means getting a space with her is difficult, but having older kids at staggered ages would be really good for her child developmentally; it certainly was for my son. My son is now a sophomore in high school, and we are still very close to her and her family. They are definitely his second family.

We started with this daycare in 2019 when our first child was four months old. We immediately knew she would be in good hands when we met the caregiver. She is dedicated to the children and takes care of them as if they were her own. She emphasizes teaching them skills to work towards independence and learning through play. She is so supportive of parents and helping with all the changes and stages the kids go through. Our daughter was in her care until almost three when we moved her to a preschool so we could have our new baby boy at this daycare. Both our son and daughter have loved being there!

We sent 2 of our children to this Day Care. This is by far one of the best decisions we made, thank God. My children love this place. They fondly call the caregiver, "Ummi" (which means mother in Arabic). She truly nurtures them as a mother. She takes them on walks if the weather is good. My 2 year old can count from 1-10 now, thanks to her and she just started day care less than a month ago after staying at home since birth. She is very organized, clean and provides a very nurturing environment for the children. My kids are happy to go and happy when they return home. We are blessed to have such an amazing child care provider in our area.