Let me first say, I have very mixed feelings about this location. My son started day care when he was 18 months for the first time, at this location of KinderCare. I was immediately drawn to it by the specific teacher of the toddler room, and the director. They both seemed to be very caring, and willing to listen and help my son who has extreme anxiety with strangers and being away from mom and dad.
Things were a little dicey in the beginning, but once he got into a routine he seemed to enjoy it. Often though, my husband would pick him up in the afternoon and he would be in the baby room. My son is 18 months, and the babies are 6 weeks-12 months...so that is a big age difference. He would often be off in a corner reading by himself or snuggling with a stuffed animal. They don't seem to have any set kind of curriculum, which started bothering me. My son didn't seem to be learning anything. We were assured that he was doing art projects and learning the letter of the week etc, but we NEVER received any art project to take home in the 3 months he was there. We asked repeatedly for them, and no one ever knew where they were. Okay.
Another thing that bothered us a lot was that they never put sunscreen on him. We provided a full bottle of sunscreen, and filled out a consent form so that they would apply it to him before he went outside the 2 times a day. Three months later, the bottle was still full. We inquired several times about it, and they said they were putting it on. He never smelled like sunscreen and none was used, so we concluded otherwise.
They also didn't seem to have a very healthy menu. My son is a vegetarian and seemed he would just be fed cheese or crackers in place of the meat, which is not a great substitute. We have found several other day cares that have full vegetarian menus.
It seemed like there staff was always up in the air, and it was proven to be this way because our son would always get lumped with the babies, or the over 2 year olds, because they either didn't have enough teachers, or they didn't have enough kids to constitute another teacher coming in. This was all proven when one Friday we received a letter that the Director was resigning TWO days later. What kind of notice is that? No reason either, just saying he was resigning. I was reassured at least 3 times that our son's main teacher would not be going anywhere, and we didn't need to worry. Well, it turned out to be complete BS. The day after the director resigned our son's teacher didn't show up. No one could tell me what happened until I ended up talking to the assistant director. In the most unprofessional way she told me that, 'the teacher just stopped coming in, I guess it isn't only the babies that don't deal well with change!" I was really put off by that comment, and didn't understand why the assistant director would speak so poorly about an employee, one who had been there 2 years, and was by far the most caring person my son interacted with.
After that we decided to switch care centers. With our son's teacher gone there was really no reason to continue putting up with all the BS that came along with KinderCare. He has been at his new center for almost a month and he is thriving so much more. They have structured activities and the staff follows all the state requirements.
While I liked KinderCare for the main teacher my son had, she is gone now. According to the new director they planned to do a total overhaul on the staff and bring up enrollment, but I kind of doubt anything will be changing anytime soon. read more