For the past few months I was juggling whether I should move my son to a different daycare once he starts preschool this Fall. My son has been going to the Gathering Place ever since he was 14 months old, and currently in its 2 year old program. The Gathering Place is a Christian based daycare center, whose program starts from as early as 6 weeks old through Pre-K. They also have before and after school program. I don’t have a huge problem with the center right now, but based on the review I got from other moms, the preschool program is still more like a daycare instead of a school. In other words, some moms prefer a more a structured curriculum for their preschooler. I do feel that they’re lacking of creativity when it comes to arts and crafts that my son brought from home. I think he did too much coloring and would be nice if he brings home more crafty projects.
Two weeks ago on Martin Luther King day, my husband and I had a day off. We took this as an opportunity to visit Hugs ‘n Hearts and compare to the Gathering Place. I have two friends whose kids go to this daycare, and they can’t say enough good things about Hugs ‘n Hearts.
Hugs ‘n Hearts is a secular based daycare center providing care for children 18 months old through kindergarten, including before and after school program for school aged children. Both Hugs ‘n Hearts and the Gathering Place are privately owned and located in Polaris area, tuition is pretty much the same and both are pretty reputable daycare. After visiting the facility, I decided to list and weigh the pros and cons of Hugs ‘n Hearts to help me making my decision.
Pros:
Older teachers and stable staff turnover.
It seems like working in Hugs ‘n Hearts is their retirement job, thus the staffs turnover are more stable, whereas the teachers in the Gathering Place are younger. We just had a major staffs turnover recently. Some of them have babies and decided to be stay at home moms, some left for better opportunities. Not only they are older, the teachers seem to be more friendly than the ones at the Gathering Place. They are constantly giving updates verbally about your child during pick up time, whereas in the Gathering Place unless you ask they don’t tell you anything. They notify you when something major happened, like when my son started hitting and pushing the younger kids (trust me, we’re working on this).
They offer Spanish and Computer for preschooler as a part of their program.
The computer program is actually just a toy laptop that they bring in to the classroom. However, it’s good enough to practice your motor skills as well as making it more fun for the kids to learn letter, shapes and the likes. In the Gathering Place, the basic education such as counting, recognizing letters, shapes are pretty structured and standard, but it depends on the teachers if they want to include foreign language as a part of the program. My son can count in Spanish, something that I definitely didn’t teach him, but not all teachers will do that.
Assessment every six months
One thing I really like from Hugs ‘n Hearts and the reason I was considering of moving my son, is that they give assessment to each child every six months and the parent can schedule time with the teacher to review how well your child does in school. The assessment covers shapes, colors, letters, and all the basic things they teach.
Cons:
Bring your own lunch
Hugs ‘n Hearts offers breakfast and two snacks, however breakfast will only be served up to 7:15 am. After that you will miss your breakfast. I know for sure I will not be able to drop my son off that early, and as a busy mom I really don’t have time to pack my son’s lunch. I understand lunches from most daycare center (including the Gathering Place) actually come from frozen and processed food. A typical lunch at the Gathering Place are chicken nuggets, fish sticks, mac ‘n cheese, (all from frozen) with bread and mix veggies or green beans. I just think that eating that food once a day is not going to kill my son, as long as we provide him with healthy meal at home. I always serve everything in the food group (rice, meat, veggies, fruit and milk), stay away from deep fried food and stick with stir fry and baked ones.
TV three times a day
My biggest problem with Hugs ‘n Hearts is the fact that they turn on tv three times a day, which is in the morning during drop off, right before lunch, and in the evening during pick up. My son is like a zombie when watching tv, thus he will not leave when I pick him up. Right now in his daycare, the kids do free time right before mom or dad pick them up such as play with toys and read books. In the summer, the kids play either at the outdoor or indoor playground.
Older teachers equals strick rules
One of my friend told me that her son’s teacher use a policy of no talking during lunch time. This is a contrast of what we do at home. Dinner is the time when we talk about what happen through out the day and I definitely do not like this quite moment. The same friend also told me that his son got a warning from his teacher from using the word “butt” instead of bottom. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about raising a well-behaved and well-manner child, but giving a warning just because the child use the word “butt” is a bit overreacting.
They only offered 2 days tuition free vacation, whereas the Gathering Place offers 2 weeks
For people whose family is out of town or out of the country like ours, having two weeks tuition free vacation is a luxury. On top of that, we love travelling and go out of town a lot. This is something that is quite important to us.
A bit older facility, clutter classroom and pathetic indoor play area
The Gathering Place is without a doubt a much better facility. The Gathering Place is a lot newer compare to Hugs ‘n Hearts. I love their indoor play area. They have a play stage with play dress up, a pretend “marketplace” with its pretend food, a big spiral indoor slide that can be closed up for the younger kids. When I first had my tour, I felt like I wanted to go back being a kid again seeing this playroom. Hugs ‘n Hearts indoor play area is basically just a regular size room with a couple step 2 climber and a few toys. Not impresive at all.
A secular center
Although we are Christians, I don’t consider our family as religious at all. But I do like the fact that my son comes home and repeating a bible verse he learned that day. I also like the fact that the Gathering Place has Christmas Pageant every Christmas starting from 2 year old group and older. They are so cute singing on stage wearing Christmas outfit. This experience will not happen in a secular center like Hugs ‘n Hearts where saying Merry Christmas is forbidden.
No infant program
Hugs ‘n Hearts only offers program starting from 18 months old and older. This will be a problem if we decide to have a second child, which means we have to drop them separately.
As you can see the cons outweigh the pros, which means I won’t move my son out of the Gathering Place. I was willing to do extra miles packing his lunch and go a little bit out of the way in dropping or picking him up if Hugs ‘n Heats curriculum is much better than the Gathering Place. However after weighing the pros and cons, it’s just not worth it.
Tags: daycare review
April 13th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Your article is very interesting, give me so much inspire. I will be back for other post. Thanks’
April 13th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Thank you! This post is truly based on my personal opinion that relates to my child… :)
June 28th, 2010 at 11:17 am
I appreciate your write-up! We are at TGP now but are extremely unhappy with the administration and the fact that there is such a high teacher turnover rate. We were considering Hugs and Hearts, but I do not like the fact that they let the kids watch tv(didn’t know this before your review). My co-worker ravs about it, but she let’s her kids watch all the time. We don’t let our child watch at home, so I surely shouldn’t pay for someone else to turn it on and tune her out. We were also not wanting to have to do two seperate places. We’ve been on the list for the daycare near our house forever, but it’s small and space is very limited.
June 28th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
I’m glad I could help. I agree the administration is so different than when we first started 2 years ago, probably ever since the director got sick. But right now I love my son’s teachers and he would probably be there for the next 2 years. It’s just not worth it for me to move him out. I hope things work out or you with the new daycare.
August 14th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
The Gathering Place only pays teachers 10-12 dollars an hour even if they have a degree in education. That is why the turnover is so high. No one is going to stay long for that amount of money.