Southminster Childcare Center – Our Story
During the early 1970s Southminster Presbyterian Church had grown into a congregation of many young families with little children. The area around our church offered new homes, two elementary schools, and a fast-growing family-minded community. Although there were signs of this trend changing, many women stayed home to raise their children. Norman Binkley Elementary school and Crieve Hall Elementary served most of the school-age children in our area, but there were no preschools nearby. Realizing this need in our community, church members worked to fulfill all the requirements enquired, and Southminster Preschool opened in 1976-1977 serving children three to five years old in our half day program which gained an outstanding reputation in our community.
By 1980-1981, it had become obvious to our Southminster Preschool Committee that more women (mothers) had joined the workforce and families needed full day childcare. After accomplishing all the necessary state licensing requirements, staff were hired, and our childcare center opened serving families with children 15 months to 5 years old. Shortly after that, because of the obvious need, we also began offering before-and-after School care to children who attended Norman Binkley school. This care extended to full-day care when school was closed for holidays, teacher in-service, and for the summer months. Great field trips and activities were implemented to keep these older children busy during those times. At that point in time, Southminster Childcare and School-age programs were full holding a state license for 99 children.
Our school-age program continued for many years until Norman Binkley became a site for YMCA programs. The “Y” offered a sliding-scale for tuitions according to family’s income, a wonderful resource which we could not offer. We eventually closed our school-age program after losing many families to that program.
We were so fortunate as time progressed to earn the trust and love of our families. As these families grew in size and infants were expected, these parents became anxious about infant care. We had many conversations with expectant parents about the possibility of Southminster opening an Infant care program. Again, Southminster staff, Childcare committee, and church members responded to this need. After refiguring and redesigning our center spaces, our Infant care classroom opened welcoming infants beginning at six weeks old, another evolution in our program.
Infant care in Nashville is very limited. We continue to have calls daily asking for Infant care. The next chapter in our history has become how, in our limited space, we can again meet the needs of our community and expand our program in order to take more than 8 infants.
Our center offers a warm, nurturing environment that is a safe, engaging, collaborative place for children to learn and grow. As a childcare and early learning center, we stress the importance of early literacy development, fine arts, and social emotional intelligence while incorporating STREAM (Science, technology, reading, engineering, art, math) into all of our classrooms.
Southminster is a unique early learning center. We pride ourselves on the small community feel of our center. With only fifty students, our team of educators can spend time getting to know each child and discover the unique gifts each possess.