full or half day childcare

Posted by salah on August 18th, 2017

Full Day or Half Day Child Care Centres? How Should Parents Choose?

Are you pondering whether to send you child to a full day or half-day child care centers? Here is a checklist that could help you to decide on choosing a full-day or half day child care centers.

The operating hours for a child care starts at 7 am and close at 7 pm, however, there is some child care in Singapore that operates till 8 pm and even 9 pm. For half day child care, the timing is around 7 am to 1 pm. Choosing the duration to put a child in a child care centers is difficult. Here are 4 points to consider when choosing the duration to place your child in child care center.

Is your child old enough?

One of the deciding factors for putting your child in full day or half day child care centre is the age of your child. Putting your child in a child care centres for the whole day might cause a shock to your child when your child is below the age of three as it is his first experience being in a new environment with a group of kids for a long period of hours without familiar faces around him.

Therefore, it would be better to enroll a child below three years old to half day child care centres to let them familiarize with the environment and get used to being away from home. With half day child care centre, they would have enough time and opportunities to learn and absorb the information they learn in school and also interact and socialize with the other child in the child care centre.

Child care daily schedule for Full day and Half day child care

Look at the time table of the schedule your child will be having in the child care centres. Is it worth putting your child in the full day child care? Do they have activities which would benefit your child in the afternoon or during that timing the activities most of the activities can be done at home like showering, lunch and nap time? If in the afternoon there are not many productive activities than it might not be worth putting your child in the child care for the full day.

Is there someone available to take care of your child?
One important factor is to consider is whether if there are people available to take care of your child at home. If both you and your partner need to work and there is no one to look after your child, it would be better to place them at a full day child care centres rather than at home with a maid. You and your partner would also have a peace of mind when you know that your child is in good hand and he is doing something productive in the child care centre.

Prices for Full day and Half day child care

It would be good to consider the price difference between full day and half day child care. Sometimes there would not be much difference between full day and half-day prices so parents would be more inclined to enroll their child for full-time child care.

Before you enroll your child, make sure to ask for the child care subsidy by the government if you are eligible as the amount subsidies will vary depending on the type of child care you are taking.