Guide to a Great Preschool
After the reality of move to a new part of the country, we realized we were past the dead lines to get our three year old daughter into a preschool and could find no resources on the internet or through our real estate agent. We searched for anything published with no luck, even calling doctors offices and came up with nothing.
After the move we only had a couple of months and alot of the neighbor recommendations were all full. As a last minute decision, we went with a local multi arts preschool that had openings and it didn’t take long to realize why. We took our daughter out and had to wait a year for an opening at a local church preschool.
To say the least, we got very lucky this time around with Saint Andrews Presbyterian Preschool. This is an extremely well run school which does not seem to be too attached to the church membership as we worried about this with a church preschool since we do not currently belong to a church. We did not want to feel like we were going to church to take our daughter to school, we wanted to feel like we were taking her to a school that was a church. We didn’t want to be questioned about why we didn’t go to this church. We like the church, but are not ready to join.
The director is the happiest, friendliest person I have ever met and is that way consistantly day to day and person to person. She seems to be able to handle it all happily and seems to have a great working relationship with her staff as well as the parents and kids.The teachers were the same throughout the year and were all great with my daughter.
The school has a music room for music and movement classes throughout the year along with a discovery room with lots of science related material and aquariums with lots of creepy crawly things kids love so much.
Saint Andrews also does a great job of keeping parents involved in happenings at the school and doesn’t immerse working or busy parents into guilt if they just don’t have the time, they team up to make sure every one is taken care of.
There was another great feature of this school that was a quick sell for me, which was the carpool line up. You don’t see much of this in preschool, in fact, I couldn’t find any school with this in Raleigh. we have a baby and a toddler and I didn’t want to have to drag them out of the car every morning to walk my daughter into school, rain or shine, heat or freezing. The teachers and director are out waiting to greet every child and parent in the morning and watch them walk in or walk them in if it is raining.
Although I am always looking at other options, because that is what we do as moms, I haven’t found anything even remotely close to the quality of this school. The prices are in line with others in the area, the classes offered are much more abundant than others, with every age from a one year old friday class to a kindergarten readiness class if your five year old just isn’t ready to make the big jump or you want them to be ahead of the game.
They offer lunch bunch, which is an option to stay an extra hour of lunch with friends and play on the playground to let out steam if you just aren’t up to going to the park every day or even if you have napping little ones that need the extra time.
My daughter has finished out her year of preschool at Saint Andrews and will be going on to kindergarten, but she will miss it. I already have my two year old signed up to go this year and my one year old will be going next year. There are alot of the families in the area that have put all the siblings through this school and it is very apparent why. We will spend quite a few years at Saint Andrews Presbyterian Preschool.
