Daycare opens in Dunkirk

A Dunkirk woman fulfilled a longtime dream this week when she opened a daycare and is proud to be a third generation business owner in the small city.
Kadie Knight, 25, opened Amazing Discoveries Childcare on Monday at a home at 222 Arlington Ave. in Dunkirk.
“I wanted to do this for as long as I can remember,” Knight said of owning her own childcare facility. Her grandfather owns the local bowling alley and her father owns a body shop in Dunkirk.
Knight said she has always enjoyed working with younger children and teaching them. She has eight children enrolled in the daycare — one on a part-time basis and seven full-time. She works by herself for now, but hasn’t ruled out the possibility of having another employee.
She also said volunteers would be welcome.
Amazing Discoveries is a state licensed daycare, the only one in Dunkirk, and has earned its Paths to Quality endorsement, which is Indiana’s Child Care Quality Rating and Improvement System.
“I had to meet all of the different safety requirements,” Knight said.
And she plans to work to reach Level two, three and four.
“The process of licensing and Paths to QUALITY ensures that the children are receiving the highest quality of care in Indiana,” Knight said in a recent statement.
The facility has no television, and Knight said that helps children to interact more with each other and participate in creative play. She works with them on sensory activities, fine motor activities, reading, painting and hands-on learning.
“That’s my method for teaching,” she said. “You have to see it and touch it to know it.”
Children also will sing, dance and play to music, with several small instruments available for use.
“We’ll incorporate music into different stories,” said Knight, adding that the music helps the children to develop social skills, express emotion, enhance listening skills, increase creativity and imagination, develop large and small motor skills, develop balance and increase vocabulary.
Meals and snacks are provided, and infants are fed homemade baby food.
Knight previously worked as a nanny for three children , ages 3 and younger, in Carmel. She is a 2008 graduate of Jay County High School and is taking classes toward her early childhood education degree at Ivy Tech.