My son has been attending ABCs for children for 3 years now. He started as a baby in the nursery,…read moreand is now in preschool. So many of the children in his classes have been in classes with him since nursery, it's so great. He's played with them for years now and has some strong friendships, which is not something I expected for a preschooler. They are great at providing a safe environment, telling us about any booboos, and observe state regulations and guidelines well, especially in the nursery. Out of the schools I visited, they had the highest standards for safety and followed them consistently. For example, in breast milk handling, there were a lot of logical sanitary and safety rules they followed, and I have heard plenty of questions and stories from friends where problems arose from other schools that did not follow these rules. (Sorry that's general but it would take me too long to explain in detail.)
ABCs is in a church and overall the facility is something I really like. They have a beautiful outdoor play area with a giant tree that extends its branches over all the littles while they play. I'm sure there are schools out there that are fancier, but to me the school seems well-equipped, thoughtfully organized, and just overall a great and fun environment.
The teachers are thoughtful and plan a lot of great activities. He's always coming home having learned things, and his social skills are particularly good. He shares very well, and likes to do it, and I really think he learned this at school. He also imitates his teachers at home, which is hilarious. He tries to make us do circle time with him, pretends to read us books like they do, gives us stickers, or teaches us. It's pretty funny, but also interesting to see what he tries to imitate. ^_^ They've also been doing little picnic lunches outside and sprinkler times in the afternoon. (And my goodness that seems like it'd be a hassle to change so many little kids into swimsuits for an hour and then back out again - but they do it! And he loves it.) They also have classes that will visit like soccer (which we are doing) and dance classes (which we skipped), and they go on some cool field trips, like bowling, museums, strawberry picking, pumpkin patches, etc.
One of the things I like most is they send out weekly newsletters with pictures and recaps on everything they've done that week. They also send out biannual reports on development which are amazingly detailed and nice to compare to your own assessments. The teachers are flexible and understanding.
If I had to give some constructive feedback, I'd say that there has been some turnover at times that could be a little worrisome, and that sometimes made our lives a little harder as our son adjusted to new teachers. When teachers are new, they are still getting their hands around all their different jobs, so sometimes they don't have the bandwidth to communicate as much at pickup/dropoff, but they get better at this after a ramp-up period. That said, there are still a lot of smart, experienced teachers, and younger teachers with kind and enthusiastic souls. We're also really dogmatic about trying to give our son low sugar food, because diabetes runs in our family, and I would say sometimes the snacks they provide can be a little more sugary than we might like. Still, I know there are probably other kids who are very picky and will only that kind of stuff.
Overall, we've been extremely happy with ABCs and would recommend it to a friend.
