Maria Teresa's Babies Early Enrichment Center, Arlington

Our Mission: At Maria Teresas Babies Early Enrichment Center/Daycare, our mission is to provide a safe, nurturing, and educational environment for pre-school children. Our goal is to create a home away from home so that children have a nurturing place to grow emotionally and intellectually. We strive in giving parents peace of mind so that they will have no worries about the safety of their children while they are at work. Our promise is to conscientiously attend to the needs of all the children in our care. Our History: Hello, my name is Maria Teresa. I ran a home daycare center since 1989 before I opened this Center in 2009. I did this so I could offer the same nurturing environment of a home to more children. I did not want to open the Center in a commercial building because I wanted to keep the warmth of a family home. There were many challenges in converting a residential home into a state of the art Center. Bringing the building up to the strictest codes while keeping the warmth of a family home was difficult, but extremely rewarding once the project was complete. When I see the children enjoying the space, I know that I accomplished this goal. Now, I can use my decades of experience and knowledge to train my staff in providing a true home away from home for all children in our care and to nurture habits of healthy eating and physical activity that will last them a lifetime. Moreover, with our unique curriculum of hands-on learning, Spanish immersion, and enrichment projects, the children in our care flourish and thrive making them very well prepared to be successful in school. Our center is state of the art in safety, education, and physical activity. Our lead teachers are college educated in the early education or related field plus experience in the field. Our philosophy in early education also takes into account physical activity, healthy mind-healthy body. In addition to using proven early education techniques and a Spanish immersion program, we introduce children to mini-sports such as mini-golf, mini-tennis, mini-soccer, and other sports so that they may be physically active from an early age. About Us: All the teachers and assistants are specially trained in our Healthy-mind/Healthy-body philosophy and our unique curriculum with Spanish immersion that all children participate in, including infants. Because we are an enrichment center, we have different projects throughout the year like monthly art appreciation (study a particular artist and their painting for one month), monthly sports camps like mini-soccer, basketball, baseball, hockey, golf, etc. In addition, we have music lessons, yoga classes, and dramatic play. We also have children plant a vegetable garden every spring and we incorporate nutrition in some of the lessons plans. For example, children have basic kitchen lessons like making their own sandwiches, shucking corn, or learning how to make home-made tortillas. We provide home-made breakfast, lunch and a pm snack with fresh ingredients including plenty of fruits and vegetables (from our garden during the summer). These are just a few examples of the projects we do throughout the year.