Early Steps Bilingual Preschool

I need to share this point of view, because I was cheated about the reviews on this place, and I think an opposite view is urgently needed for future customers.
There are so many wrong things about this school.
I went to this school interested on the spanish immersion feature, but I was shocked when I entered the building.
1. Every single part of the school is over stimulating, the walls are covered from top to bottom on drawings that look like taking from a Disney movie. yes the drawings were cute but for a recreational park not for a school. That seriously bothered me, I couldn’t take my eyes away from the walls and I can’t imagine how kids and specially small kids could learn how to focused and be calm with an environment that won’t allow/​nurture to focus in something else but the walls.
2. It bothered so much that I did a little research about children’s learning development, and I found out that a calm, quite and neutral color environment is best to develop their attention span and concentration specially in early ages as 2 – 3. Which was surprising for me that a company that works in child education was not aware of this. (I guess they are trying so hard to be Original) but to me this look like incompetence.
3. Talking to the director was a complete disaster, not only she lacked of diplomacy but also her arrogance allowed her to speak bad about other companies in the business in order to show how great this school is. It also felt like the whole interview was focused (on how should I beg/​pay) for a spot because according to the Director this school is very successful therefore I should have singed for the waiting list which had a price (non-​refundable) and doesn’t guarantee to get in, not counting that I made my visit when they just had open a new campus (Springfield) a few months ago and the whole school just had 5 students at the time.
4. The children’s uniform. not only they are ugly they come in bright colors (red) which is a very strong color, that is mostly used for Warning sings, publicity or war/​violence content. by analysts this is not a color that help to develop serenity or quietness.
5. when I visit one of the rooms, one child was handle a piece of paper and crayon, A). the kid was not interested at all so B) the teacher’s solution was to take the activity from him and doing it instead, not even showing him how to do it and let him try again but color it for him.
6. nonetheless to say I didn’t hear the spanish language at all while visiting and the teachers didn’t look happy or being teaching anything, they look like babysitting if so.
I do believe that children learn the most by playing, but playing with something that is meaningful, that allows them to discovered and sense the world around them, not to free playing with a stuffed doll in an imaginary/​pretending world or plastic food they can’t learn about textures, smells or skills like social by sharing the REAL fruit or motor skill by cutting it. If they are so focused on the playing experience where were the building blocks component of the water/​sensorial table or hands on experiments???
So I won’t ever bring my child near to this school, no even if they pay us to do so.
I think that investing on early childhood education is the column of adulthood development. Is where people learn how to focus and also how to chose, respect, interact, communicate, discover and of course to learn about the world around them, What kind of expectations about reality are we creating in our children’s little minds if everything they interact with is pretending??. I didn’t see any of this learning by playing feature happening in here.
I leave it to you parents.

My kid has been going here since it opened almost a year ago. This is a great school with fantastic teachers — my kid now understands and speaks much better Spanish than me! The school itself is beautiful, the staff are enthusiastic and helpful, and they always put on amazing shows where the kids perform songs and dances. The school also arranges plenty of fun activities: almost all are included in the fees (e.g. farm animals came to the school one day — including a llama, donkey, goats, etc), and there is usually one optional extra activity (like soccer or karate) that you can sign up for (an external company will come in to teach those). I’ve seen the school growing consistently as other parents discover this hidden gem.