Ladybug Montessori Learning Center

We have been really happy with our experience at Montessori Minds so far. I was specifically looking for a Montessori school for my child as we had (lightly) started with this same approach at home. I visited every single school that was within a 30min drive from us, so I will first start with the differences I noticed: - When you enter Montessori minds, there is a sense of peace that you get. The room is not extremely busy. Your eyes can find a focus point and then slowly travel from shelf to shelf, activity to activity, absorb them and then start wondering how kids would approach them. In comparison, with other "Montessori" schools, they have every single material on Earth out, extremely busy sight and I didn't even know what to look at first. - The space is extremely well kept, clean and of a great size for the students it supports. The layout of it is a natural flow. - The staff ratio plus the number of staff is one that would allow for the right balance of attention (whenever I did find a "low" ratio, there was only 1 staff in the room. I find that having at least 2 people is essential as we don't all feel great 100% of the time and that can impact the job that is done) - The yard at the back is a great outdoor space. You can see how the students were kept in mind. My child was with us during the tour and just ran towards it in excitement. There is no need to go outside, cross streets, parking lots, etc to get to it which provides a great sense of security. - Observe the way that you will be spoken to as this is how the children will be spoken to as well. The pace is calm, the language is respectful and the vocabulary is one that I would be happy for my child to repeat. With regards to the experience after we joined: We came from a chain school to this school. Of course you don't get some of the fancy apps and automation that the large school would have. But what I got instead was staff that was deeply connected and aware of my child. My child's reports went from "X is a cute little boy" (previous school) to comments that very well described my child's personality, interests, and current development stage. Instead of a generic "X had a great day", if I had a question on their day, there was never a time where they didn't know what exactly my child did/was involved with. One thing that stuck to me during orientation was that they said: "We are with your child all day, daily. We will be able to know if they are off and we will let you know." And every time they let me know, they were right on + noticed things before we even could. I think that this contributes to how little he got sick from "daycare germs" as I imagine they do this for all the kids. We never went trough the phase where they are out most weeks of the month because there is a new germ that everybody is catching. It was also noticeable to me how they strive to create a community among children and parents. There were school such as Halloween, Mother's Day and Father's Day that allowed us to connect. We were able to later have playdates and just overall feel part of a little community. You will really be happy that you found this gem of a school!