Introduction:

scientific and technical revolution brought with it, the massive incorporation of women to work; for this and many other causes, spaces such as nurseries for girls and boys appeared.

Objective:

to describe elements that characterize child care in nurserys.

Methods:

a narrative review of the literature was carried out as a methodological tool that made it possible to characterize the publications on certain issues. Thirteen articles that were published in Brazil, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Portugal and Colombia, as well as appeared in MEDLINE, Academic Search Complete, MedicLatina, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, SciELO and BioMed Central databases from 2014 to 2019 were selected. Sleep in children attending nurseries, healthy environments, presence of enteroparasitosis, cognitive and psychosocial development and nutritional status were the aspects that stood out on this topic.

Conclusions:

the need for more research on the subject was perceived, given that there is not enough evidence on the relationship between sleeping posture and sudden death. However, there are other aspects that offer guidelines to follow, such as the use of norms and guides on the child's sleep, the four premises of a healthy environment in nurseries, institutional care on cognitive and psychosocial development, the relationship between presence of children in nurseries with child parasitism, and the responsibility of caregivers on nutrition.