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Last Monday, the children and staff at West Side Kids in Waukee moved into a new day-care and preschool facility.

West Side Kids is a day care that serves children aged 6 months to 10 years and a preschool for 4- and 5-year-olds. Currently, it provides services to about 80 to 90 children.

The new day care, located at 145 N.E. Dartmoor Drive, is just down the street from the old location. Erin Moorhead, co-owner of the West Side Kids with Cindy Vokes and Erika Shepherd, said the organization wanted to keep the facility fairly close to the old location so parents would not have to change arrangements. She also said keeping the locations close helped the children make the transition between the buildings.

“The kids transitioned really well,” Moorhead said. “We thought maybe some of them would be apprehensive about it, because routine is really important. But this whole time the building was being built, since we’re only two doors down, the older kids have walked down every day to see the different things that have been happening.”

Moorhead said the new day care is about 1,000 to 1,500 square feet larger than the prior one, which allows children of different ages to be separated into different rooms.

Over the years, the staff at West Side has learned what things would best suit their needs, which helped in designing the “state of the art” building, Moorhead said.

The staff leased their first building in 2005 and remodeled it to fit their needs. The old building had a small playground, but no place for children to go on rainy days.

One of the big improvements over the previous location is an indoor gym.

“The point of us making our building bigger was this indoor gym,” Moorhead said. “This last winter was so bad with all the snow and rain, and you can’t get outside and play; this gives the kids a place to go that is not the regular classroom.”

The new location also has a bigger playground – about four times larger than the previous location, Moorhead said.

Although the day care has moved to its new location, the front of the building is still being worked on; it should be done this week.