In this season of love and light, we are excited to announce

the creation of a new childcare centre for Sherwood Park. The BriarPatch Childcare Cottage is a long awaited initiative under

the umbrella of the BriarPatch Family Life Education Centre. 

Opened in the Fall of 1996, the BriarPatch is celebrating

28 years of providing education, support, compassion, and resources to the community at large. Our reach goes beyond our hamlet and we are excited for our brand new centre.

 

As a Registered Canadian Charity, in early 2008, we lovingly

created a social enterprise called the BriarPatch Community Preschool. This provided sustainable funding that truly complimented our other programs, including grief services, counselling, workshops, and referrals to other agencies. Our research on the childcare profession took over 4 years, and after much thought and consideration, we decided to community to creating a new childcare division. Our Mission is to provide a innovative feel and focus for childcare, with intentional, quality, child focused programming, and incredible opportunities for team development. Our immediate goal is an inclusive centre for all. And space for more programming.

 

BriarPatch Childcare Cottage will be home to little ones starting

as young as 12 months and up. Our current programs (our community preschool and some of our counselling and administration) will stay at our Brentwood Boulevard location that we've been working from since 2008. The new Centre will provide space for expanding our family counselling and group programming, along with a spacious and separate space for the new Childcare Cottage. Now that the Centre is open, we are loving the colors, the warmth, the new toys, our sweet team and all our nature opportunities that exist outside our doors.

 

We have created an "Interested Families List" and encourage families to join the list if they are looking for childcare in our community. Updates will be sent to members on that list as we progress through this exciting new journey. Thank you for reading and for sharing our expansion plans. We are honoured to be in a position to offer the BriarPatch Childcare Cottage to more families in Sherwood Park and beyond for 2025.