Preschool near Upper Rockridge
Looking for recommendations for excellent pre-schools around Upper Rockridge (ideally within an ~10minute drive from the neighborhood.) Looking for a spot for a 3 year old to start half-way through the year (Jan'24); open to Spanish immersion and/or styles like Montessori or Reggio Emilia. Thanks!
Sep 11, 2023
Parent Replies
Our 3 year-old daughter just started at Linda Beach Cooperative Preschool, which is located in Piedmont (approximately 5-10 minute drive from Upper Rockridge). We love the parent community so far. The classroom is cheery, bright, clean, colorful, and immersive; the outdoor play yard is engaging and well-arranged for safe and active play. They bring in various outside instructors on subjects from time to time (e.g., gymnastics class, Spanish). We love the teachers. This is a play-based cooperative school that has been around for 80+ years in Piedmont.
I believe there are 1 or 2 spots open now for enrollment in the TuTh class (2 days / week) or the MWF class (3 days / week).
www.lindabeach.org
Try Arbor in Rockridge! We love it. Spanish exposure and play based, fun projects and lots of outdoor time, healthy snacks, focus on social-emotional learning. our 3 yo is loving it. They have openings and flexible schedules and may have one mid year also.
Rockridge Montessori was a good fit for our daughter and meets a lot of your requirements. She was there from ages 1-3 pre and post covid; learned a lot of important toddler skills and had great caring teachers overall. It’s very much on the pricey side just like everything in Rockridge but that would be my only con.
Room To Grow is where our child spent magical two years. RTG is conveniently located for people living in Rockridge. It is a Reggio Emilia school. It appears small and the facility may look “well-loved” but the program is excellent and kids learn and play so much. They accept 3 and 4 year olds.
We only seriously considered Spanish immersion preschool and are in Upper Rockridge. I visited at Arbor and really loved it (now there are two locations). We might have started there if they had longer after-care. One of the great things about Arbor is the variety of schedules. Our neighbors go to the original location and have been very happy with it.
We ended up going with EBI because we are curious about the elementary school and the drive isn't much further, about 8-10 minutes from Upper Rockridge. There are several families from this neighborhood there and I don't think you'd have an issue starting mid year as long as your child turned 3 before September. We've been super happy there (had great teachers last year and great teachers again this year). They are constantly doing incredible arts and crafts projects and the teachers do a great job or providing both warmth and structure. That said, EBI is expensive and has more breaks than other preschools. We also heard great things about Colibri (more affordable) on Piedmont but were never able to get off the waitlist. We applied there for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school year before we gave up.