I'm still going back and forth on this one. I will be working full time once DD turns two in January (right now I work part-time away from home and part-time at home). Anyways, we'll be moving and there will be a lot of changes for DD (one of which is that the language of the country will change). Our initial thought is to start her in a daycare because we found one close to where we'll be working where many of the professors send their kids (we're academics). The one we found looks lovely online that is (we won't have a chance to tour it before we have to sign up DD). It has all kids from 0-3 combined together with a very large outdoors play area and tons of activities for kids. Plus they have a 1 to 4 worker to student ratio and all of the workers either have a degree in early childhood education or are students in it. It does have strange hours, though, which means its hours/cost would not be any different than if we sent her to a preschool.
There are some bi-lingual Montessori schools nearby (although quite a bit farther from our work than the daycare) and I keep wondering if we should go that route instead? At most we can just call these places and look at the pictures on their websites so I'm pretty nervous about it all (we don't have someone locally who could tour them for us). My gut tells me that a Montessori environment would be great for her but it's the unknown of it that bothers me (we don't know anyone whose kids are at these schools and we at least know one professor personally whose children have gone to that daycare).
Now, we can always wait a hear and start her when she turns 3, which is the tentative plan now, but it might be harder to get a spot.
Any thoughts? Anything you'd look for in particular at the schools/daycares?
Oh... and as for DD. She seems to be a pretty smart kid but most of the things she's doing are in English (her sight words, she counts in English, colors, shapes, letters etc.) so maybe since the daycare is in her second language it would even the playing field more? She was in daycare a couple of months this summer in her third language and that went well but it was only for a short time, she was speaking significantly less, and there were much older kids there (up to age 12).
