Harmony House Learning Center

Harmony House has been our wonderful learning center for almost 3 years. My daughter has been cared for, loved, nourished and encouraged by Monica and her thoughtful staff. She has not only learned her abc’s but also how to manage herself and her own energy– beautiful skills such as grounding her body, meditation and learning her own boundaries. Skills, not taught often enough but are, I believe, invaluable.
Monica has a wonderful way with her students and teaching is clearly a vocation for her. I love that my daughter comes home singing Beatles songs as well as other fun seasonal songs. We went on a field trip once to the Lyndsey museum to see birds and other wild life… before we left school Monica had all the children singing «Blackbird singing in the dead of night… fix these broken wings and learn to fly…»
We cherish our time at HH and feel eternally grateful for all our daughter has taken away from this outstanding learning community.

I don’t like to give small businesses bad reviews, but I would never recommended Harmony House to a family with an infant. After speaking to our friends and colleagues about our terrible experience there, it turned out that one family had the same experience! Because of this, I felt that I had to review this place.
My infant son was not properly cared for here. They did not follow his schedule. He was often overfed, and the experience with infants across the staff was radically different. In addition, there were always different people taking of care of the infants, so the babies never really had any stability.
The Director does not stay at the Center during the day she goes to her office in the Laurel District. I think this is the main problem. She may have good intentions, but she doesn’t actually work there during the day. She’s present for drop off and pick up. I know because I get off work early, so she was rarely around at 3 when I picked up my baby.
The secondary problem is the high turn over with staff, so that you never know who is taking care of your baby and what experience they have. I’m saying this, and I was there two weeks. There was turn over in two weeks
We ended up leaving Harmony House, and the Director kept our deposit, which I thought was ridiculous because we basically paid over 2k for 2 weeks of care. At that point, I didn’t want to fight her for the funds because I felt so manipulated by her. She tried to say that my husband was aggressive toward her, but I brought him along because I felt she was trying to manipulate another 1k dollars out of me before I left. The part about how she tried to portray my husband is the same thing that happened to my friend’s family when they tried to leave the center as well. Clearly, Monica has issues with receiving feedback about the less than mediocre care the center provides.
Additionally, she canceled our baby’s last day of care, leaving me in the lurch to find someone to watch him. That was the day I was supposed to pick up his things, so she left them on the porch in grocery bags and left me a voicemail informing me that all of my baby’s things were sitting on the porch. This was so unprofessional.
She also lied to me and said she fired a staff member when she was trying to keep me from leaving HH. When I spoke to that staff member three days later (she was still working there, but was supposedly fired?) the staff member said she had found another job out of the childcare industry and had put in her notice.

Ditto everything in Mary-​Ellis’ review. Our sons have been well loved and cared for at Harmony House. And when our son started kindergarten this year, he was well prepared. Thank you, HH!

We have had a great experience at Harmony House. Our child just started Kindergarten after 1.5 years at HH and he was very well prepared. The school is a great combination of structure and freedom for the kids to do what they want to do. The teachers are energetic and loving. The director, Monica, is very well organized and really cares about the school. She puts tons of effort into making it great. There is a strong and imaginative curriculum and lots of field trips to neat places. Beyond what it offers for the kids, there are lots of fun parties that Monica puts on (the graduation ceremony had a bouncy house, face painting, pony rides and live music!!!) to connect the community as a whole. There are also date nights on at least one Saturday a month, to help the parents stay connected to each other! One of my favorite aspects was that all the kids learn to meditate. I know it’s hard to imagine your 3 year old meditating, but they have a model that is completely age appropriate and really works to teach kids about how to ground themselves and get in control of their energy in a positive way.