Scuttlebug is a safe, clean and play based preschool.
Many schools claim to organize educational activities but don’t have qualified and/or articulate teachers to initiate and organize those activities. In all the tours I have taken thus far, the directors (tour organizers) did not arrange interaction with their teachers, even when I requested them. During the tour at Scuttlebug, Nicole, one of the teachers approached me and started talking about the school. Children this age absorb so much from their environment that they start speaking a language new to them by the time they are three; a feat difficult for even the most brilliant adults. And child psychologists consider this age vital for future brain development. So it seems important that they have at least one articulate and interactive English speaking teacher around.
Scuttlebug displays names and qualifications of its teachers on the website. None of the other schools I visited do that.
Directors at Scuttlebug, Ashley and Eunice are excellent communicators, spend a lot of time with kids, and know them by name. When I shared new research on educational activities, seminars, phonics etc., with them over email, their response was quick and encouraging.
Their fee is only slightly higher than other schools by about $10 per day. $10 for diapers, wipes, and food cooked on site by a personal cook (that other schools don’t provide) sounds like a worthwhile investment.
My daughter looks forward to going to school in the morning. A better indicator, I believe, is whether she wants to come back after school. And now that she has started speaking, when my wife goes to school to pick her up in the evening, and her teachers tell her “Mommy has come, let’s go”, she sometimes says “No No”. She identifies with her toddler room teacher Ms. De, and her new preschool teacher Ms. Anna. Ms. Perla is very playful with kids.
The reason we are changing the school is that my wife is starting her masters in fall, so I’ll need to pick our daughter in the evening, and it takes about an hour from my office to drive to Scuttlebug thanks to US 101 and San Thomas “Expressway”. I hope Sam opens a branch in the Mountain View/Sunnyvale area.
