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About COMMUNITY DAY NURSERY

Location:

115 S MUNN AVE, EAST ORANGE, NJ 07018, US

Mission Statement

It is the mission of Community Day Nursery to provide children with a safe, supportive, stimulating environment in which each child’s potential for emotional, intellectual, social and physical development is nurtured. It is our goal to strengthen a cooperative partnership with families, through a variety of parenting services and group activities

Description

In the early 1890’s there was a group of women in the Oranges called "The Friendly Visitors". They visited needy homes, doing what we today term "volunteer social work". When one of the visitors happened upon a young child using a butcher’s knife to cut a younger sibling a slice of bread she reported the incident to the head of the Associated Charities. The Director, Mr. MacDougal, appointed a committee to find a room or a house and draw up plans for a Day Nursery.

Our Day Nursery opened in 1894 with a board of seven women and a matron who took turns making soup at home and taking it to the Nursery each day with bread and sometimes "surprises" in the way of baked apples, cookies or cake. The mothers paid five cents a day for one child, eight cents for two, ten cents for three.

After its incorporation in 1897, a certain Mr. Keck became interested in the Nursery. Feeling that its quarters were inadequate, he bought the building at 60 S. Center Street, Orange, which housed the Nursery until 1961.

Our current site, opened in 1961, remains an architectural model for early childhood programs. For many years a "daycare center", in 2001 we entered into a relationship with the East Orange Board of Education and the New Jersey Department of Human Services to provide a public preschool program with before and after school care.