Lil' Sunbeams Childcare

I highly recommend Lil’ Sunbeams Childcare!! Sara is wonderful with the children. She has watched my Granddaughter since she was only a few months old. She’s now a year and a half. There were some rough times when my Granddaughter was experiencing Separation anxiety from Daddy. Sara went above and beyond searching through my FB to find photos of us all. She laminated them for my Granddaughter to have throughout the day. It worked wonderfully. Sara has always gone above and beyond making sure that whatever difficulties my Granddaughter was having she’d work on solutions. She’s very loving and caring.

After being a stay at home mom for a few years, then only working part time and leaving my daughter only in the care of immediate family members, I was nervous to put my daughter in someone else’s care when I returned to work full time. After our interview here I was confident that this was going to be a great place and I left with feelings of being at ease, comfort and excitement. I knew this would be a great place for my three year old to go each day. As a little bit of a “helicopter mom” with crippling anxiety, I worry quite a bit about what my daughter is doing at all times that I am not with her. I never had to worry about that with Miss Sarah. All I had to do at any point to check in on her was log into the app to view photos that were added throughout the day. For the first week or so, I would communicate with the owner of Lil Sunbeams via messages as well. My mind was at ease at all times. My daughter flourished in so many ways in the care of Lil Sunbeams. She began to learn her ABC’s & letter recognition at the age of 3, learned to count extremely well, became a social butterfly and had so many great experiences through activities and educational play. This is a close-knit in home childcare where you truly get that family feel and I much prefer that over a daycare center where you feel like just another customer. We are forever grateful for Miss Sarah and the impact she had on our daughter!! She is now 5 years old and still talks about the fun actives she did at Miss Sarah’s house.

My two granddaughters attended Lil Sunbeams Daycare. I was able to meet Sarah and view her childcare facility multiple times each week, when I dropped off and picked up the girls. As a retired teacher with 10+ years working with early childhood aged children, I was disappointed with Lil' Sunbeams Childcare and had concerns with Sarah. First, Sarah was very pleasant while  interacting with my husband and myself, along with the other adults when present. She would also help pack up my granddaughters. As the only staff present, it appeared that while interacting and assisting with the adults, she would visually lose track of the other children. Another concern was with the toileting. As one of my granddaughters was working on being potty trained, Sarah would have to choose to be 1:1 with her or attending to the other children present. Lastly, I didn't see that there were toys or activities set up for the children to freely interact with or explore. It appeared that the TV was on more than it was off when I picked up or dropped off the girls. All-in-all with these concerns and others that I didn't witness first hand, I do not feel comfortable in recommending Lil' Sunbeams Childcare to other parents.

After my negative experience here I will never utilize a daycare again that is not established in a more professional setting. I was in a rush for immediate childcare for the short term and gave Lil Sunbeams Childcare a chance. I deeply regret my choice and would never recommend to another parent!

Terrible experience, I would highly NOT recommend. Please take the time to read this, to hopefully prevent yourself from having the same situation. Most of this relates to payments. However, there were concerns we had with the dogs that are there, one being very large and that I witnessed jump over the gate. Both were very hyper and not well controlled. The main issue that I experience was that my wife and I had agreed to utilize Lil Sunbeams Childcare for a duration of 8 weeks while my wife was in school, this was more than the required 2 weeks of notification. However, at the end of the 8 weeks, we had our Deposit kept and an additional week of which there was no supervision withdrawn from our Procare account (software used by the daycare) without consent (total of $768). During this timeframe we had some issues of which Sarah was aware, namely that I had surgery on my spinal cord and was diagnosed with cancer. When we attempted to discuss the payment issue, we initially thought it was just a innocent mistake. During the dialog however, it became apparent that that was not the case and that it was intentional. The rational that Sarah provided was sending documents, different than the ones she had initially provided and that we had never seen or signed. I attempted to understand the situation and discuss further, but Sarah was unwilling to engage or respond. When I said that this seemed criminal in nature and that I didn't see another option but to escalate to Small Claims Court, her response, instead of trying to discuss further was, "I am fully prepared to go to court". I hope that you can avoid the mistake we made it using Lil Sunbeams Childcare, and the resulting extremely negative experience.