The POP Center best serves families who work from home (even if just 1 day a week) with young children, ages 0-5.

Yes! We actually encourage you to bring your own food and drinks .  Food and drinks may only be consumed in our designated community kitchen where we have a community fridge/freezer to keep your items chilled, a microwave to warm up food (we just ask no strong odors please), and unlimited coffee and tea for our Work 'N Play Members.

Please note that we are a nut-free facility and do not allow any foods with peanuts or tree-nuts to be brought in or consumed. Please check the ingredients on your items before bringing them in.

Due to state restrictions, our staff may not feed or administer bottles.

We usually stick to a 10:1 ratio with an appropriate mix of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. This model is great because it allows siblings to stay together and allows younger children to be entertained by and learn from older children!

Each location has 2 - 3 playgroups and has 1 - 2 floating supervisors that can move between the groups as needed. Because parents are on site at all times, we are exempt from EEC licensing, and therefore, do not have required ratios to adhere to. That being said, we still make safe and common sense decisions when it comes to filling out our playgroups.

Yes, we  have fully-accessible entrances and bathroom in our work n' play studio.

No. Because we have babies crawling and toddlers learning to walk throughout our playgroups, we kindly ask everyone to take off their shoes before entering into the playgroups. We ask that everyone --including adults -- wear slippers or socks with grip on them at all times.

No. We are both mask and vaccine-optional at this time, but always follow the local Department of Health and Town mandates. We encourage you to do what feels most comfortable for you, and ask that you show everyone respect at all times. We encourage everyone to follow local health expert advice and determine for themselves what is safe for their child and family.

Yes! For info on booking our office space for a private event, please email info@thepopcenter.com

If you're looking to book a party visit our parties page for more information!

Yes. Our closure calendar is provided to our members before enrolling.  We are closed for most but not all major holidays, and we stay open during school vacation weeks.  We do not follow any school district's snow closure policies, but rather we make decisions based upon where our members and staff are driving to The POP Center from and if it's safe for everyone to drive.

No, however we do offer make up days for Work 'N Play Members.

We offer make-up days! State guidelines state that any member here testing positive for COVID must be out of The POP Center for 5 days with Day 0 being the day of testing positive, and can return with a mask as long as the person is symptom-free without the use of medication.  If a mask cannot be worn, then they must stay out for 10 days from testing positive.  Vaccination status makes no difference.

So once you're eligible to come back let us know when you'd like to schedule your make-up day!

Our staff goes through the same stringent protocol as anyone who works in a childcare center. They're all put through the CORI/SORI and National Sex Offenders Registry background check.

Yes! This is how we're different than a childcare center. Drop-in, play, enjoy your child at anytime!

Yes, we organize the day into structured play blocks that may include time in our fine motor room, the arts & crafts room, the gross motor park, or any other of our variety of play rooms!

Yes, we encourage parents who are doing Work 'N Play to check in their child freshly diapered to optimize their experience with our program. Diaper alerts are expected to be responded to within 15 minutes of receiving it, allowing parents to reach a natural stopping point in their work in order to diaper their child. We have plenty of diaper changing stations throughout our facilities.
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Children who are potty-trained will also need to be escorted to the bathroom by their guardians as our playgroup supervisors do not enter the bathroom with children. Given the circumstances, bathroom alerts for toilet-trained children should be responded to promptly to avoid accidents.

Yes! We provide infant/toddler cribs as well as toddler and preschool cots for our designated quiet times. Parents are encouraged to bring their own sheets, blankets, and other sleep items (pacifiers, stuffed animals, etc.) for their children to feel as comfortable as they are at home!

Designated quiet time is from 1pm - 3pm at The POP Center, so toddler/pre-school children here for afternoon or full-day Work 'N Play Memberships will be encouraged to nap or do quiet activities during this time.

If a child is being disruptive during quiet time, parents will be called in to come and either get the child to sleep or entertain the child until a playgroup supervisor is available to play with them.

Infants (0-15 months) can stay on schedules set by parents, but we encourage parents to plan on putting their infants down after their feedings as we cannot provide one-on-one care for each infant. We do our best to get infants to sleep, however if we are unsuccessful after 10 minutes, parents will be called in to assist.

Infants under 12 months must sleep in our cribs without anything but a sleep-sack and pacifier in the crib with them.

POP Center Staff performs sleep checks three times on the hour and keep all infants under 6 months in their direct line of sight during sleep.

Infants are NOT allowed to sleep in their carseats while a part of playgroup.

Yes! We want everyone to feel safe and secure. We are a nut-free facility, so please be sure to avoid bringing any foods with any type of nuts on-site.

Yes, we do have a dedicated sensory room with a door and lights that dim, specifically designed for children who may need time away from loud noises and other people.  In that room we have a therapy swing, sensory activities, and an inflatable peapod should you find these helpful.

For the most part, yes.

We do open up a limited amount of Unlimited Play Passes for non-members to purchase which allows them access to the playrooms for 2 hours between 9am - 1pm or 3pm - 5pm. This does not allow access to our supervised playgroups or co-working lounge, and your children are under your own supervision (but can still play with our playgroup kids).

We have a professional cleaning company that cleans our space bi-weekly. We close at 5pm every day to allow our POP Center staff time to follow our strict cleaning and disinfecting practices of all toys, materials, furniture, spaces and floors daily.

Additionally, our POP staff disinfects all playrooms and toys during the mandatory mid-day break to ensure each rotation of children has clean toys to play with!

You will love the app we use, Brightwheel! You'll download the Brightwheel app on your smartphone, and your playgroup will communicate with you there. The POP Center Staff will alert you via SMS text through the Brightwheel app when we need you.

We always allow makeup days.
Just let us know when you want to come in!

We strive to keep our ratios to 1 playgroup supervisor to 10 children and no more than 4 infants in one group. We do not take more than 40 kids total in our center, and we break up into multiple groups.

An infant stays very stimulated in playgroup! In all of our playrooms we have activity bouncers and infant toys to stimulate your infant's brain, soft mats for your infant to get tummy and head control work. Our playgroup supervisors hold each child throughout the day for a significant period of time to give each infant nurture and care and eye contact. Your infant is on your schedule. Our staff can put them down for a nap in our infant sleeping rooms where your infant will have their own emergency evacuation crib, and you can come in and change diapers and feed as you need to keep your infant on their schedule. We do have private nursing stations available.