At the beginning of the 19th century, so-called "Kinderbewahranstalten" (childcare institutions) were established in Germany, usually on private initiative. Here, children of mostly poorer families of pre-school age were to be looked after during the day in order to bring them up to be "clean and tidy" and to give them an "education" appropriate to their age and perceptive abilities. This was based on the fear that children without appropriate care from their parents were at risk of neglect and a slide into crime.

In 1835, the Jungfrauenverein rented rooms in Wiesbaden to look after children aged two to six during the day. After just a few years, the number of children to be looked after had risen from 14 to over 100, so the initiators sought their own building, which they were able to move into in 1839. At the same time, they expanded the circle of children to be cared for. Orphans were taken in permanently and schoolchildren were looked after in the afternoons. The house had to be extended again in 1844 and 1846. A donation of 50,000 marks from Julius von Knoop made a new building possible in 1880.

The focus of the work in the children's home changed. The number of places for children of kindergarten age was now limited to 16. The majority now lived directly in the institution, while others came there after school. In the kindergarten, the day-care children were looked after together with the children of the same age living in the children's home. The kindergartens founded by the educationalist Friedrich Fröbel (1782-1852) in Bad Blankenburg in 1840, which were mostly aimed at middle-class families, took a different approach to "protecting" children from destitution. Fröbel believed that the early childhood phase was of great importance for the further development of the personality and recommended special play and learning materials to encourage the children. These included building blocks such as cubes, rollers or balls made of wood or movement games for older children. By the end of the 19th century, the pedagogy developed by Fröbel had also become established in the Wiesbadener Kinderbewahranstalt.

As the Wiesbadener Kinderbewahranstalt was no longer able to meet the demand for childcare places around 1900, the so-called Volkskindergarten, which was managed by the city of Wiesbaden, opened in 1899. It was aimed at working parents. The financial basis was a foundation. The building with its own playground was erected in Gustav-Adolf-Straße. The three kindergarten teachers lived in the building with the housekeeper and the maid. Here too, the children were kept busy with Froebelian activities. They also received hourly lessons in the mornings and afternoons and were bathed once a week. In 1908, around 70-80 children attended the facility. In addition to the Volkskindergarten, there were three other private kindergartens, each of which took around 30-50 children.

Around 1900, it was mainly church congregations and private organizations that set up kindergartens. In 1912, for example, the Luther Church congregation founded its "infant school". The number of childcare facilities continued to rise until the 1930s. In 1937, there were 29 kindergartens in Wiesbaden (including three municipal ones), attended by around 1,500 children under the age of six. In the mid-1950s, Wiesbaden had a total of 50 daycare centers run by different providers (35 by church congregations and church associations, three by the Workers' Welfare Association, one company kindergarten and eleven private facilities). At this time, the city no longer had any childcare facilities of its own; however, it supported the existing operators financially.

The first municipal daycare center to open after the Second World War was the kindergarten in Hasengartenstraße in 1960, initially with 60 kindergarten and 20 after-school care places. At that time, there were a total of around 4,300 places in Wiesbaden's daycare facilities. As in the early days of Wiesbaden's daycare centers, the main aim was to support disadvantaged children.

In the 1960s, the demand for childcare places for children under the age of six, but also for schoolchildren in the afternoon, increased due to the desire of many women to work. Local politicians in Wiesbaden complained about the large number of so-called latchkey children and refused to support female employment with the aim of being able to afford luxury items. In the following years, many parents resorted to self-help and founded their own daycare centers. A kindergarten run by parents opened in the new district of Klarenthal in 1969, one of the initiators of which was Hedwig Schmitt-Maaß, a city councillor.

During the 1970s, the city of Wiesbaden increasingly took the initiative and set up new kindergartens. In the mid-1970s, Wiesbaden had around 5,100 kindergarten places, i.e. 71% of all children under the age of six were able to attend a daycare center. The expansion of the offer continued in the following years, so that in 1981 the municipal youth welfare office reported 103 daycare centers in Wiesbaden, of which 21 were municipal, 34 were run by the Diakonisches Werk and 27 by the Caritas Association, as well as five by the Arbeiterwohlfahrt and 16 by registered associations.

As there has been a legal entitlement to a half-day place for children between the ages of three and six in Germany since 1996, the services on offer in Wiesbaden have also been further expanded; with the legal entitlement to a nursery place for children up to the age of three that came into force in August 2013, numerous new childcare places were added for the youngest children. In 2014, there were around 180 daycare centers, in which over 12,000 children aged between a few months and 12 years were cared for in crèches, kindergartens and after-school groups, 36 of which were run by the city.

The educational concepts according to which the facilities work are diverse: in addition to Montessori and Waldorf kindergartens, there are also music and forest kindergartens. There are inclusive childcare facilities, bilingual kindergartens where children are cared for in two languages, as well as denominational daycare centers where religious education plays a more important role. There is a common conviction in all daycare centers today that they are important institutions for early childhood education.