Sitting on her spacious porch, surrounded by every toy imaginable, Theresa Greenfield, owner of the First Street Family Daycare in Marcellus, is enjoying a moment before she heads back into the house to finish up painting and prepping for the upcoming school year, set to start after Labor Day.

The house acts not only as a place that her family resides in and calls home, but as her business, too, hosting up to 16 children ranging in all age groups from infants up to school age.

Greenfield, a Marcellus High School alumni, grew up on Howlett Hill Road. She pursued her love of children and went on to study at American International in Springfield, Mass., majoring in elementary education and minoring in early childhood education. Her pursuit to find her niche started out in nursery and daycare centers and a one-year stint with the Syracuse City School District. Afterward, Greenfield moved back to Waltham, Mass., with a group of friends from school and continued to do what she did best, spending a year working at a private preschool in Cambridge.

“You just couldn’t make enough money to support yourself doing that,” Greenfield said. “At that time, like today, there were no teaching jobs.”

To make end’s meat, Greenfield waitressed at Friendly’s after working at the preschool. The restaurant eventually offered her a management position. She accepted, but realized quickly that this was not the path she wanted to take.  

“I did that for a couple of years and decided it just wasn’t for me,” Greenfield said. “I didn’t want to babysit adults … because that’s what I was doing.”

All was not lost working at Friendly’s, Greenfield met her future husband, who, at the time, was working part-time and going to school at Bentley University in Waltham.

“I said, I love you dearly, but I would like to get married and have children someday,” Greenfield said, “I want to move back home and he followed me. I knew what I wanted to do; I knew I didn’t want to work in day and school age.”

The wheels for Greenfield started to turn; she took the leap and started her own business in the basement of her mom’s house. She approaches her 20th anniversary in the business on the first day of school, 17 and-a-half years at her current location on First Street.

“She was a little skeptical,” Greenfield said, “but she let me run with it.”

“After being in school age programs and daycare centers, I took the best things that I learned every place I worked at and knew this was thing I wanted to do.”

There was a place in Springfield, Mass., that Greenfield particularly remembers called The Children’s House as a young student. The beautiful, luxurious Victorian House tended to infants and teenagers of all ages. She did her best to model her current business after that model as well as take different parts of what she liked, didn’t like about her time in her career field.

Different than most

The First Street Family Daycare isn’t like most nursery school programs.  

According to Greenfield, a concentration on academics is minimal as she focuses on learning through play including 30 minutes of reading each day — 10 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon. Singing and dancing is the norm as play dates out on Greenfield’s playground is almost second nature. She points out that while most children do not go out during the winter months at other nursery schools, the children take advantage of her backyard for sledding. In the kitchen area, there is a board that highlights the children’s day and what they had for lunch, giving an outline for the parents when they come to pick them up.

“Parents are very busy,” Greenfield said, “if they know that their child has had a hot lunch then maybe they will be OK with a bowl of cereal at night or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

Greenfield stresses emphatically that there is absolutely no television, a half-hour of a Disney movie at most while naptime is a crucial part of the day’s activities from 1 to 3 p.m. She also says that it’s important for the children to be confident and to be able to stand in front of a group and talk, that’s what circle time is for.

“When they are done here,” Greenfield said, “they are ready for school.”

“Watching a child grow from infant through school age,” Greenfield said, “and knowing you were a very important part of their life and that they probably wouldn’t be the wonderful child they are today if they didn’t have a  great beginning.”