Hellobee Boards

I love how secure it is. You need a key card to access the classroom area and only two people have one. Plus there are cameras in the rooms and the directors can always see what's going on.

I love that it's a good mix of learning and play time and the teaching stuff is age appropriate.

One other pro is they do a lot of specialty things and take the kids outside often. In the past month there was a garden day (all the kids planted flowers), a community helper day (firefighters came with a truck), and as Easter egg hunt. Next month there will be a water day before school lets out.

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There is an amazing outdoor area with lots of different creative activities, for example baking pans attached to the fence with various mallets to make music). It also feels like a community they organize occasional weekend play dates at local parks, moms and dads nights out, and family yard days where everyone pitches in to work on the playground.

My oldest started in a public pre-k program this school year and it's been pretty amazing actually. We'd bounced around several daycares around this area, so I had developed a strong list of likes/dislikes (basically, it all boils down to the staff and the director), and I've been so pleased this year.

Some of my favorite things are:

-It's a class of 14 students with 1 head teacher and 1 assistant teacher

-The teacher is super responsive by email. She always emails me by end of the day, but sometimes sooner like on her lunch break. Just yesterday, we exchanged 3 emails in one morning.

-We have 2 very thorough parent/teacher conferences. One in Fall and another in Spring. I was impressed that the teacher had a long checklist of skills/milestones/emotional milestones or issues and took the time to go through each one with me and tell me where my kiddo was, what they hoped to see by the end of the year. The emotional part was the best because our previous daycare assessments didn't include emotional stuff--like her assessments really honed in on my daughter's strengths and weaknesses and it was nice to know her teacher notices those things and *cares*. Like she noticed LO is very social and verbally advanced...but also can be bossy and can have trouble sharing. And yes, that's 100% accurate. I love that her teacher is tracking her emotional skills.

-I like the weekly newsletter the teacher sends out. It tells us what new books they will read, what new songs/fingerplays they will learn, what their new centers are for the week, what their new word wall words are. It makes it easy for me to reinforce those things at home.

-I like the curriculum--it's play based. I like that they go walk to the local park for recess, and I like that they play games.

-I like all the special activities they do--this week is Week of the Young Child and they've had so many special crafts. They do a good job of celebrating the little stuff, which makes school fun.

-And I like the old-school assistant Teacher, who is a little harder on my girl. The TA reminds her to talk less and eat her lunch, etc. It's a good mix between the super sweet head teacher and the old school TA.

Favorite things:
-They have indoor stroller parking, so you can leave the stroller and be on your way after drop off
-They are very loving and responsive to emails (both teacher and director)
-They took my concerns about safety seriously and added more drills this year
-Because w are in an urban area and space is at a premium, there's no outdoor space. BUT they have a playset inside, along with ride on toys.

Least Favorite:
-They are very disorganized (sending out notices last minute)
-They don't really think things through to be age appropriate (holidays programs start with oldest kids so youngest have to sit through the whole thing)

This may not be as helpful for your board meeting, but my favorite thing is the teachers and how much they care about my daughter. We have fairly low teacher ratios, and I feel she gets a lot of one-on-one attention. Within each room, they also break the kids into sub-groups by age, and one teacher is in charge of that group. For instance, in the baby room, the 4 youngest babies had one teacher, the 4 middle babies had another teacher, and the 4 oldest babies had another. While the teachers help each other out, it made sure there was one person who was primarily in charge of overseeing her development. It was her infant teacher, not me, who figured out the secret to getting her to do her tummy time (important because she had torticollis) was to take her outside on the porch. Little personal things like that. Sometimes the teachers from the older rooms would come hold her and play with her on their lunch breaks, which was more attention for her plus getting to know the teachers before she moved up.

I like that they provide all her food, since she started solids. They also provide her milk once she switched from formula / breastmilk. They provide organic food, although they follow that definition loosely, as I know they use Cheerios and goldfish sometimes. They post a weekly menu so you know what's being served. They're also really flexible if you don't want what they offer and want to bring your own food.

One thing I didn't like in the infant room was that there was no schedule for naps. I had her on a nap schedule when she was at home, but that went out the window when she was at school. She would often take a long nap when we got home, but if she'd had an earlier bedtime, it probably would have resulted in a cranky baby.

I also wish I got more information about what she does all day. We get a daily report, but in the toddler room it isn't as detailed as the infant report was. For instance, the toddler report doesn't include what they served for meals; I have to find the menu if I want to know. It would be nice to have more of an automated and/or camera system to check up on her, but our daycare is a small neighborhood business, not a big chain, so I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Another thing I wish was different, but we knew going in, is that they have very short hours. They're only open from 7:30 - 5:30. We've juggled our work schedules to make it work, and I'm lucky to have a pretty flexible job, but it can be stressful on bad traffic days making sure I can leave work and get there in time.

I like they they spend a ton of time outside as long as the weather is good! Very very play based but also a lot of different activities to expose them to new things.

Video cameras! Ours do not show a view of the changing table. I can log on from my phone or computer and get a glimpse of also throughout his day.

The art projects displayed in the room. At least once a week the room transforms with new projects and theme decor. I like that little ones is constantly visually stimulated and gets to do work with different materials on crafts.

The jungle gym apparatus. LO spends time in two classrooms every day that has fun and expensive climbing equipment that we could not justify buying on our own. I like that even indoors he can get pretty physical climbing and crawling through the apparatus.

Lots of outdoor space and time spent outdoors in all weather conditions (they have a good stash of extra coats and boots!).
It's very inclusive in that no holidays are celebrated. We have kids from single parent households, or with same sex parents so there are no Mother's Day or Father's Day activities that would leave kids out. There are kids from all over the world, so religious holidays are also not celebrated. They still do fun things (like pajama day on Halloween, etc. but it's inclusive).
It's also totally play based.

Access to playdough, some sort of art project (paint, paper gluing, etc), and sensory table (water, dirt, sand, paper shreds, etc) everyday. Access to outside playtime everyday (unless raining hard or snow). They put sunscreen on the kids before going outside (either brought from home or theirs with signed permission slip from parents). I also like the community building events, as they are fun celebrations that are not religious. We had fall festival with games, a pancake breakfast in the winter, and an art show this spring, all on Saturdays so two whole family could attend together and parents could engage with the community.