Preschool Review: Fair Oaks Preschool

We toured Fair Oaks Preschool back in 2010 while looking for a good option for our first child.  First off, can I tell you how few and far between affordable infant daycare is to find?  Anyhow, I was excited about this place because it was right next to this:

The Gamble House (photo above taken from The Gamble House website) and the neighboring Craftsman homes were such idyllic neighbors to a preschool that I couldn't help but be excited for the preschool based on location alone.

I called and was told that I had to attend an open house before I could get an application/wait list form.  Fair enough.  So my husband and I rearranged our Saturday schedule and brought our son along.  The facility itself was small - like any other place they only had a handful of spaces for infants and just a little more for toddlers, with the bulk of the space going to preschool and pre-kindergarten.  Infants and toddlers were divided with only a room divider, which was a bit disconcerting, but the preschool and pre-K were in another room.  I didn't care for the preschool teacher and her answers to my questions ("the children do what they want") but really loved the pre-K teacher's approach.  They had tiny toilets for toilet training, and a slightly bigger toilet for the preschoolers.

I think I said to my husband after the tour, "I wish we could have PCC for the Twos Room and Fair Oaks Preschool for the pre-K."  Regardless, at the time we toured, it was a better option than WCC, so we decided that we would go ahead and apply.  Needless to say, we put our application and a $40 check in and never heard from them again.  Fun.

Preschool Review: Linda Vista Children's Center, Pasadena

So in the long never-ending search for a daycare for #1, I toured Linda Vista Children's Center, which was back then called All Saints Children's Center, based on the fact that they used to be based at All Saints Church in Pasadena. I toured it a long time ago, and I didn't come away with a nice fuzzy feeling.

So here were the pros:

• Beautiful campus - they had rented space from PUSD at a closed down elementary school and they were in the scenic Linda Vista neighborhood of Pasadena.
• They had openings for children under the age of 3, with not absurd child-to-teacher ratios (as in, better than state required minimums).

And here are the cons:

• Huge fundraising requirement. Each family was expected to help raise some absurd amount of money.
• Permanently in temporary classrooms. Since PUSD is going to make no renovations to the closed down campus, the Children's Center is permanently in temporary classrooms. Especially for the younger children who aren't walking yet, the cheap linoleum flooring didn't seem ideals.

I also took issue with the fact that in the Toddler Room, the changing station was so so close to the food preparation area. But it's been years. Maybe they changed that. If you take the tour, be sure to look, and remember, according to state requirements, they need to have a separate sink for diapering and a separate sink for food preparation.

Fancy lady (you know, the one I mentioned in the post about San Marino Montessori) had sent her older son there and absolutely hated it. A good friend of mine also had her first child there, and when I asked her about it, she said, "It was good because they had space for her, but I needed to get her out of there as soon as possible." Yet another friend sent her son there and loved it because the kids got to play a lot outside.  Go figure.

Preschool Review: San Marino Montessori, Pasadena

In our quest to find a good daycare/preschool for our first child, San Marino Montessori was recommended to us by a mom that was at WCC with us. Now, this mom was CLASSY with C (and not a K), had really nice outfits for her baby girl, and drove a really expensive and nice new premium SUV. This is all I knew of this lady but she seemed so put together that I took this recommendation very seriously.

After taking the tour, I would never ever recommend San Marino Montessori to anyone.

The one major pro that I can tell you about San Marino Montessori is that it is cheap for Pasadena. I went on a tour, and at first glance everything seemed okay not great.  Just adequate, but for the price, adequate is great. It's not a real Montessori, if you know what that means. The teachers don't come from whatever the two main Montessori organizations are. It's more of a "Montessori light" kind of place, which I actually didn't mind. They have the Montessori equipment, and the director seemed very earnest about the facility, which is always great. The class ratios were on the high side (like at the regulated minimum number of teachers per maximum number of students allowed).

But what turned me off on the place is that after the tour, on the way out of the facility, a teacher had lined a bunch of 3 year olds up against the wall and was yelling at them for not behaving. They were coming back in from recess (I had seen them on the playground during the tour) and I guess some were messing around in line. The way the teacher was yelling at them brought tears to my eyes, and I thought it completely developmentally inappropriate to discipline 3 year olds in this way. I later researched the facility online and found that another parent had brought San Marino Montessori to small claims, suing for money not returned to them after the facility asked the family to leave. To this day, we hear of other families having their child at San Marino Montessori and hating it, so it's buyer beware for this facility.

Disneyland Tip: Rider Switch

My firstborn son is nearly four and obsessed with Disney's Cars.  We've been deliberately keeping from him that there's this place about an hour away from us called "Cars Land" since Disney theme parks are, to put it mildly, PRICEY. 

Thanks to a good friend of us who works for Disney, we were able to go to a place that looks an awful lot like Radiator Springs in the movie.  He was so happy.  So happy.

 

Imagine my own happiness when I learned about Disney's Rider Switch program.  I didn't know it existed and it has really revolutionized the way we will go about Disneyland and Disney California Adventure from now on.  Since we're a family of 2 adults, a 42" child, and a 1 year old, about half the time of each adult while we've been at an amusement park has been standing with this creature while the other goes on the fun ride:

 

I learned that there is a Rider Switch program in place (you can go on the Disney website where they will give you a list of all the rides that have this pass).  So say for whatever reason one or more children cannot go on a ride and an adult needs to stay back with them.  So your entire family rolls up to the queue where there is a helpful Disney Cast Member in place. You tell them you want to do the rider switch. They give you some instructions on the rider switch pass.  One person stays behind while the rest of the party goes.  Then when the party gets back, the other person has a pass to go on the ride (with a friend of course!) that allows that person and ride buddy to bypass the normal standby line.  I wish someone had told me about this before we went to Disneyland the last time!

 

So we only utilized this for the ultra popular Radiator Springs Racers since we went on a weekday during low season, but it was really quite nice. We had Fastpasses, got there within the appointed time frame, got a Rider Switch pass on the way in, and the 42-incher and I rode the ride while Dad and the 1 year old stayed behind. It was quite an awesome ride and as soon as we found Dad my firstborn wanted to go again, which was quite convenient since Dad had the Rider Switch pass which effectively acted like a second Fastpass for the ride.  (I wanted to go again, too, but let's be real here.  The three year old can't watch the spitfire and Disney Cast Members really aren't THAT nice where they'll babysit for 20 minutes while we queue up and ride the ride.)

Every family with a child not old enough for the faster rides or not tall enough for the rides needs to know about this! Hopefully this will help you out the next time you go to Disneyland / Disney California Adventure / Walt Disney World!

Wine-Not?

My talented and hilarious friend Bethany conjured this video up in her spare time. How she has spare time with four kids, I don't know. She must have a magic wand or something. Or maybe it's the wine.

Check out her blog "Bad Parenting Moments." Enjoy!

Preschool Review: Pasadena City College Child Development Center

So in my previous post, I mentioned that I did not want my child continuing at WCC to the next classroom. This sparked a furious campaign of looking for another option for him.  Pasadena City College Child Development Center was the first that I toured. 

The first tour that I did was of the Pasadena City College Child Development Center.  The biggest positive on paper for me when I first found it online was that part time was a straight proration - say you are only doing two days out of five - you'd only be paying 40% of the full tuition.  Other places stack the tuition structure to discourage part-time enrollment.  The second major plus: the waitlist application is free.  At the time it also made it the cheapest of all the options we had for daycare.  It was also the first and only NAEYC accredited institution that I had toured.

I signed up for the tour and was a little put off by the "please don't bring your child to the tour" direction I received over the phone.  I remember at the start of the tour being really put off by all the levels of security at the Center.  Parents were signing their child in and out by computer, and there was an electronic security code to enter the main doors.  Then there were doors on top of doors to get into each classroom.  My initial first impression was that it felt like a minimum security prison for babies.  Once we were in the Younger Toddler room, though, I was instantly sold.  The room looked so clean, new, and fresh.  There were tiny little sinks for the children, complete with motion sensors, and tiny little toilets.  And there was so much space for them to play.  We got to meet the Twos room specialist, and I knew I wanted her for my child.  No, I NEEDED her for my child.  She talked of toilet learning and what they did not encourage and support toilet learning, and it was so different from the attitude of WCC that I couldn't imagine anything better than what PCC CDC did to initiate, support, and reinforce potty training.  By the time I got to preschool I didn't even care what that looked like -- I so wanted the first rooms for my child.  The whole center is a lab school for PCC's Child Development majors, so all classrooms utilize best practices in early education.

Besides the beautifully kept up classrooms and teachers that utilized best practices, the biggest positive to PCC CDC are the child-caregiver ratio.  They have better than state minimums, and they do not count the student-teachers in the classroom as part of the ratio.  Which means that even though a classroom says they have a 4 to 1 ratio, they may have more adults in there in a caregiver capacity that are not counted towards the ratio - playing with the kids, helping the teachers, and they themselves learning from the children. 

Preschool Review: Westminster Children's Center

So it seems like whenever I meet someone with a kid, the subject almost inevitably turns to childcare/daycare/preschool.  We live in Pasadena, and it seems like a lot, and I mean A LOT, of people we know have nannies.  My husband and I don't have that luxury, but I'm a big big fan of group care in general.  Primarily because there is backup for the caregiver if they, I don't know, have to eat, have to pee, have to turn their head for a second.  But there are other benefits as well.  Children in group care settings tend to be more social, parents get to meet other parents, and, yes, while young children tend to get sick a lot when they first start daycare they also tend to build stronger immune systems earlier.

But anyhow, I digress.  Everyone always wants to know what everyone else thinks of this school or that school.  Over a series of posts I will share with you my experiences and impressions of different Pasadena area daycares/preschools.  As always, my opinions are my own and I encourage you to tour the facilities yourselves to get your own impression.

My first son was in a daycare in Pasadena, Westminster Children's Center - from the time he was about four months old until he was about 14 months old.  The process of finding infant care wasn't very long - there were only a number of places in our budget, Westminster was very close to my home, and they were willing to take him for only two days a week and let me choose which two days.  I loved the Infant Cottage and the wonderful caregivers there - they were like a second family for my child.  But as he got older, I became more concerned that he would have to transition out of the Infant Cottage into the rest of the daycare.  My concerns were not minor.  Westminster Church regularly rented out their parking lots to filming crews and the lack of security for the rest of the Children's Center in the main church building was concerning.  And I wondered how he could possibly potty-train if they didn't help potty train (their claim was "you need to do it at home and then we'll take them to the bathroom", which I believed seeing as how they only had adult sized toilets for the toddlers and preschoolers).  I also knew that teacher turnover from the older infant room on through preschool was extremely high, and so I made a decision before my son turned one to start looking for a new daycare. 

This turned out to be the best decision I could have made.  Not a year after we moved him out of Westminster Children's Center, a series of unfortunate events happened that forced the closure of all but the Infant Cottage at Westminster Children's Center. I still have nothing but fond things to say about the infant program, but I hear it is not what it used to be now that it is under new management.  The church from the last I heard is trying to reopen the preschool, but I would advise parents to tread with caution at WCC.