The Orange House

Our son attended the Orange House this past year, and both he and the rest of our family had a wonderful experience. The Orange House is a lovely home-based daycare on a quiet street with fun outdoor and indoor play spaces. It was our son's first daycare outside of the home and it was so reassuring to send him to a very caring, highly organized, and exceptionally communicative daycare. We got daily verbal updates, thorough responses to any questions that came up later in the day, and truly helpful communication around any tougher issues (e.g. when a child at daycare was sick or our child needed to stay home). I felt cared for as a parent as well when we went through tough sleep regressions. Our son thrived there! We are moving to a new preschool so he can join his older brother, but we will miss Helen and the Orange House! 

Our son attends the Orange House since he was 20 months from Oct. 2019 to present. We all love the atmosphere and environment and would highly recommend. Our son has truly blossomed and developed while there and it has been a fantastic experience through this on-going pandemic. Helen and staff do a wonderful job teaching the children life-lessons and also giving them the freedom to explore.  

My son attended Orange House, from turning two to turning three. I believe Helen, the director, has also expanded her offerings to children up until Kindergarten Helen and her staff do such a fantastic job with the kids! She has been open continuously since the pandemic started and it was our trust in Helen's ability to follow protocols and, well, be on top of things that allowed us to have our son return in the summer. (This was before he started at MFS this September.) Helen runs a tight ship, but ultimately this results in happy, extremely well cared for kids who make sweet friendships even at such a young age. A vibe of intelligence, warmth, and reliability pervades Orange House and man are those kids prepared for their next step.  

We cannot say enough wonderful things about the Orange House.  My husband and I are both physicians and needed childcare for our 3.5 and 5.5 year old girls in a pinch during the pandemic.  Helen and her team stepped up immediately and we had one of the best childcare experiences we've ever had here.  The folks at the Orange House are warm, loving, and so experienced.  They set gentle limits, encourage kids' potential, teach kids to maturely play well together, and engage in multimodal learning and fun with songs, art, movement, musical instruments, and play.  My children have never come home in such good moods and so well-bonded with each other as during the two months they spent at Orange House.  My 5.5 year old wrote a chapter book while she was there! My 3.5 year old came home singing songs and saying rhymes she'd learned there till she fell asleep at night.  This was the only place we've ever been that my kids didn't cry at drop off.  Both the indoor and outdoor play spaces are beautiful.  They are also doing a great job during the pandemic of keeping kids safe, with outdoor drop offs, masks at drop off, strict sick policies, and frequent handwashing throughout the day - but they are also keeping the environment during the day as normal as possible for the kids.  Thank you Helen and Orange House family!

The Orange House has been a very nice place for our 2-year old daughter, safe, cosy, toddler-friendly. Helen and her staff were very nice; the days and activities were well organized. We could see our daughter was happy to go there every morning. 

If you don’t have time to read more: we love the Orange House! Our daughter started there when she was about 18 months old. She always seems excited to go, and typically runs into the main room not even waving good bye to me. She learned a lot of skills, the biggest one for me is how to behave in a group. Helen is very insightful, she tells me every day how my daughter’s day went (mostly fine), what behavior she sees developing, and even shares her own experience of a mother -- she is a mother of 3. Yes, the kids are sick sometimes, but that’s just unavoidable in a daycare, but every time it happened she sent text messages and useful information about dealing with the illness. The place is clean, tidy, and toddler-friendly. The kids have a lot of activities during the day, they dance, sing, look at books, play LEGO, do yoga, etc. They also have a schedule of moving in and out of the house, so they get to be outside as well quite a bit. Helen has several helpers, she always introduced them to me when they came for the first time. They are all very nice as well. There are some rules you have to stick to as a parent, but they are all understandable given it’s a daycare with about a dozen children, but frankly doesn’t require much adjustment. I highly recommend the place to everyone who is looking for a safe, fun, educational, and loving place for their small children!

We highly recommend the Orange House (OH). Both my daughters have attended daycare there and have had a wonderful experience. If I had a third child he or she would also attend OH. I have always been impressed by how organized and caring Helen is and how she has so much knowledge about childcare. She runs her daycare like a little school. Kids have lots of activities throughout the day, their day is very structured and they are taught the basics skills that prepare them for preschool. The OH is very tidy,  clean and very cozy. Drop offs and pickups are very easy. Big thumbs up for the Orange House !

By the time my son transitions to pre-school in September, Helen will have cared for my kids for 3.5 years. 

Ever since my daughter started going to The Orange House in 2014, Helen’s house has seemed like home. We are so glad that we found such an amazing place where our kids could make friends, learn, play, laugh, and bond with truly caring adults.

My kids have been both the youngest (14 months) and oldest (48 months) kids at The Orange House. No matter their age, they were always happy, safe, engaged, and attached to Helen and her wonderful assistants. To my daughter, who went to Helen’s from 25 months to 48 months, Helen’s home felt like a continuous playdate with her 10 best friends. But it also prepared her extremely well for pre-school. As she became older, she enjoyed helping the younger kids, which taught her both patience and compassion. It was also great training for her future role of big sister.

When it was my son’s turn to start at The Orange House (at 14 months), my daughter counted down the days. She was bursting with excitement for many reasons. She wanted to see Helen. She wanted to see Helen’s own children and her husband, because they were also like family to her. Finally, she wanted to see one of her favorite assistants, Emily, who had been working at The Orange House before we even started in 2014. 

To me, Emily’s longevity at The Orange House epitomizes so much of what is wonderful about this daycare. Helen and her assistants truly care about the children and love interacting with them, and also seem to enjoy working with each other. Given the longevity of many of the assistants, Helen appears to be a great manager and The Orange House, a great place to work. Helen’s management skills extend to the many aspects of running The Orange House. Helen makes the whole operation seem painless and fun, while most parents have, on occasion, been secretly excited on a Sunday night to know that their little terrors will be in someone else’s care in the morning.

When I count my blessings, I often think of the positive starts my kids have had. Positive starts that are due in large part to the experiences both of them have had at The Orange House. While we’ll be moving on in the fall, Helen and the rest of the OH team will always be family and we’ll forever be grateful.

Lizzie

We are winding down to our last month at The Orange House, we’ve been enrolled for about a year.  My daughter is going to move to a Pre School closer to our house in SF. If you have a chance to walk in the door at The Orange House, you’ll get the immediate vibe of home..  It’s a great place to be a toddler and we’re going to miss it greatly.  If I could have Gia under Helen’s care for another 3 years, I’d do it!  Helen is an amazing caretaker. She has taken care of me as much as she has Gia. I’m a first time mother, so I had lots of anxiety about leaving Gia at a daycare. Helen has always been just a text away with the right answer to put my mind at ease. She gives me consistent reports on how my daughter is doing and always addresses my concerns with openness and compassion. Her program has Gia doing art projects, learning songs, reading new stories and gives her lots of fresh air outdoor time. I’m not sure if Gia was a busy body upon arrival or if Helen’s environment has nurtured an exploratory nature.  Regardless it’s a great fit for a busy child.  I love that my daughter uses the word ‘Please’ which she learned from Helen, I love that she loves to wrap her babies up in blankets, another thing she learned with Helen and I love that Gia loves music, which is always in the background at Helen’s. It’s not my personality to be overly supportive of something unless I truly believe in it. I truly believe in what Helen has to offer families and consider myself lucky to have found her. My daughter will forever be imprinted by this positive environment and for that I am grateful. 

We are a family from New Jersey (originally from China) with a three-year-old Toddler.
Our daughter went to the Orange House through our 6 months stay in Berkeley. 
We all love the Orange House very much and will gladly recommend it!

The place is cozy and clean. There are plenty toys in the house, and lots of activities in the backyard.
Ms. Helen and all her stuffs are always nice, caring and helpful. 
To be honest, I did not expect any teaching from daycares.
But I was amazed by my daughter at library the other day. She was able to 'read' the ` brown bear brown bear what do you see' book all by herself. And she told me that she knew several other Eric Carle's books because her teacher taught her:)

Comparing to the old daycare we had at New Jersey, our little girl definitely loves the orange house much more. She used to cry about going to daycare. But for the orange house, she is always happy to go. In her opinion, it's more like a friends' lovely house rather than 'scary' strange place. She told me multiple times that she did not want to go back to New Jersey because she did not want to go back to her old daycare.  Of cause, we had to leave regardless how sad we were (but, yes, I did pick a new place for my little girl according to the standard of the orange house). 

We are missing the orange house a lot !! 

We are a current family at Orange House and give it our highest recommendation. Our son has been happily attending since just after his 2nd birthday, and he's 3 & 1/2 now. We were drawn to the space because it is clean, calm, and joyfully child-centered, and Helen in particular is incredibly focused on providing a loving environment based on respect and dignity for the child and providing a relaxed but consistent structure for the day so the child feels safe and always knows what to expect. We are big fans of her positive discipline and peaceful peer-conflict resolution strategies, and it is my great wish that I will be able to glean some of Helen's practical wisdom for my parenting as well. Orange House is full of lovely wooden & imaginative toys, books, and living plants to make the space bright and inviting, and it smells and feels like a happy home. We love Orange House because there are no extremes—it is simply a great place to be. Our son has made close friends there and comes home every week with new songs and nursery rhymes to share, and points out books at the library that he's heard at Orange House. If I designed my dream daycare for my son from the ground up, it would never approach what Helen has made out of her home. She has earned our utmost trust, which we don't give out lightly, and we will be sad to leave when it's time for our son to go to preschool!

We are a family of two Visiting scholars from Germany with three sons altogether, and our second son Friedrich (just turned 3) spent the last 9 months in the Orange House. We were extremely happy with the Orange House and will gladly recommend it! Our son just loves it! For us as parents, it was very helpful that Helen is extremely well organized and so supporting to find the best solution for the whole family situation: With her huge experience and her warm and respectful way of communicating, she helped us to find the best transition schedule (and even had time for a long phone call to help us finding a decision on a weekend). She is warm, respectful and clear in her communication with the kids, too - and even asked us to teach her some words in German that would help our son (who spoke no English at the begining) to adjust to his new daycare (e.g. the german word for "gentle" and potty training related words).

Friedrich loved going to the Orange House and he couldn't wait every morning to tell Helen or the staff what he had for breakfast or what he did the other day. Also it was great to see him finding friends there and he talked about the amazing art projects, about the songs he learned there and the books they read a great deal.

From the first day we felt that this is a wonderful place for kids and we are glad that our son could be a part of it and can take this good experience back to Germany. We'll miss the Orange House family a lot!