Imagination Station Learning Center recently opened to provide Brookhaven with another daycare option.

After two weeks of business the center has an enrollment of 13 children, but has the capacity to provide service to 80. Children ages eight weeks to 9 years are being accepted.

Tim and Becky McDowell decided to open the daycare after much deliberation.

“We’ve always wanted a business and we have fought with each other on each others ideas of a business, and low and behold, this comes along and we just think it was a Godsend,” Tim said.

Becky said a main focus for the learning center is providing an educational foundation for children before they enter school. In order to do that, the learning center will teach the children based on the Easy Breezy curriculum, she said.

“The curriculum is tried and proven by my daughter, who has a very successful center in Flowood,” Becky said.

Becky said her daughter received numerous calls from parents in August, after their children have graduated in May, to commend her on the curriculum, because their child is at the head of their class.

“I want to bring a program that takes a child from birth and by the time they’re 5 years of age, they are totally prepared for kindergarten and first grade,” Becky said. “And they do not struggle like I’ve seen children struggle who did not have a good curriculum going into school.”

In addition to the education curriculum, a major goal of the center is to decrease the spread of germs and infections, Becky said.

“I’m a critical care registered nurse and I worked at the Baptist hospital in the ICU,” Becky said. “In that setting, I was taught to use really good infection control practices. I took that knowledge and transferred it over to what I would want in a learning center.”

With that goal in mind, Becky had sinks installed in each classroom and as part of the curriculum, children are taught good hand hygiene.

“I think really what sets us a part, is that this facility was designed in a school setting,” Tim said. “The building is designed in a classroom setting and the classrooms are designed specifically for each age group.”

The couple felt it was their duty to provide Brookhaven with a quality-learning center, Becky said.
“Brookhaven’s not large, and there are so many that do not have the opportunity to get early childhood education because there is not enough centers,” Becky said.

“If there is a rewarding part, it is to see that you’re actually helping people,” Tim said. “A lot of the mothers that we talk to can’t even go back to work because there is nowhere to put their children.”

Imagination Station Learning Center, located on West Congress Street, is currently accepting applications for more children, Becky said.