Colusa Kinder
Community SubscriberEl Cerrito, CA
Warm, experienced, creative place for nurturing early learning👣colusakinder.org🦉 Flexible enrollment options🌻🌈☀️
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Parent Reviews
Parents, please Sign in to post a review on this page.Our daughter attended Colusa Kinder from 4.5 months to 2 years. She really thrived at Molly's, and was always excited to go to daycare each morning to see Molly and the other kids. Molly has a lot of experience working with infants and toddlers, and is always so nurturing, warm, gentle, and positive. She really cares about their growth and development, and supporting parents in helping infants/toddlers through their many transitions--introducing solids, learning to use straw and open cups, trying different ways to eat fruit, managing teething pain, potty training, addressing sleep issues, etc. She clearly spends a lot of time with them, singing, reading, playing, exploring. Her home-base set up is very cozy with good indoor/outdoor space, and is in a very safe and quiet neighborhood. She really cares about what is right for the kids, including wanting to make sure there are "cohorts" of kids to facilitate age-appropriate verbal, motor, and social-emotional growth. Overall we felt really blessed to have had Molly's support for our daughter and us. We felt green and vulnerable as new parents, and her experience and positive attitude were so helpful for us. Our daughter struggled a bit in the first few weeks transitioning to her new pre-school, and a big part of that was missing Molly, her small group of friends, and essentially second home.
I enrolled my daughter at Colusa Kinder when she was about 5 months old and it was such a delight to have her there!
The school is run by Molly who has a lifetime of experience working with little ones and is very passionate about child development. I immediately trusted her to take good care of my daughter. She was thoughtful about age-appropriate activities for the children with lots of outdoor time in her cozy backyard and fun sing-alongs, book reading, and toys inside. My daughter thrived and her language accelerated during her time there and I believe that Molly's amazing teaching skills had a lot to do with this development. Additionally, she was especially focused on emotional development, which is something our family values.
Most importantly my daughter would dive into her arms at drop-off with a smile and sometimes wouldn't want to leave at pick-up because she was having so much fun. It warmed my heart as a mother to know my daughter was being so well taken care of by someone in our community that we trusted so deeply.
We have since moved to a different school because we moved and the commute to Colusa Kinder was too far. We miss you Molly and all of our friends at Colusa Kinder!!!
I love Colusa Kinder for my son, almost 1 1/2. It is a Reggio based program and a small home school/daycare. The owner/director/teacher Molly is lovely with the babies and toddlers and everything she does is well thought out and developmentally appropriate. I was a Montessori teacher and am now an early parenting consultant, so I look for and appreciate care providers who treat children as capable individuals and with respect- Molly does both. And, she is a lot of fun for the little guys!
We were there for a short period several months ago. I think "goodness of fit" depends on the age of your child. In our experience the setting was well-equipped for infants and young toddlers. Our active 2-year-old, who had been at another school for over a year prior to his time at Colusa Kinder, experienced some challenges there that he didn't have before or after, at any other school he has attended. It was our impression the teachers had less experience working with typically developing preschool-aged children, as many of my child's behaviors were pretty typical of any 2-year-old (from my experience of over 10 years in the field). Happy to chat more if you have specific questions.