Hooray For The JCC!

Zosia switched to a new school last week. OK, I suppose it's not technically a school, but it's more than a day-care center, too. Let's go with "early childhood program."

For the last year she's been at the East Shore YMCA, which has been extremely convenient. It's less than 5 minutes away and right on the way to work, and we got a free gym membership when we signed her up. So for us it was ideal.

For her, though, it was OK. Good but not great. The teachers are very nice but there didn't seem to be a whole lot of learning going on. I feel a little strange complaining about some of the things I didn't like -- lots of coloring on photocopied drawings, snacks consisting of discount sugary cereal -- because those things were done that way due to the shoestring budget they operate on. Other things were more significant -- for example, the Y lacked an outdoor play area. On warm days they would pack everyone up and go out to Riverfront Park, or even over to City Island, which was great, but most days their physical play consisted of a couple hours in the gym. And there were no art facilities, no sand or water tables or the like, no chances for the kids to get dirty.

Still, Zosia really enjoyed going there, she made her first real friends among the other kids, like I said her teachers (Monica, Margaret, and later Kasey) were great. Plus, you know, they totally potty trained her, which was worth the cost of daycare all by itself. Over the last few months, though, we sensed that maybe it was time for her to move on. She was getting close to the age when she'd move up to the next class up, and that class had gone through a significant amount of teacher turnover. The next result was, it seemed to us from observing during pickup and dropoff, lots of time spent watching videos and playing on the computer. Plus it seemed like the way discipline was doled out was different than in Zo's current class -- it's not that the teachers were rough with the kid, but they raised their voices more (and more quickly) than we would have liked. That might be how they thought they needed to deal with rambunctious three- and four-year-old boys, but it just seemed wrong to us.

So we started looking around and ended up visiting the JCC Early Childhood Center and loving it. The vibe was fantastic, with lots of kids of lots of different ages running around doing lots of stuff. There were art stations set up, water tables, books, dress-up, blocks, you name it. The teachers seemed extremely involved with the kids, and, to top it off, they have a huge outdoor playground that they use every day (as long as the wind chill is about 20 degrees). We were sold right as we walked in, and the more we learned (they're moving over the a Reggio Emilia program, they have weekly music and art classes, the JCC has a full gym and pool for us to join), the more we wanted to get Zo there right away.

Alas, we had to wait a few weeks since they were full. But they were working on hiring another teacher so they could increase the number of students while maintaining their ratio, and within a few weeks the new teacher was hired and Zo was in!

She started about a week and a half ago and I think she's really liking it. She already talks about her new friends (including Ben, with whom she discusses Blue's Clues and lollipops), and the things she does throughout the day. It just feels like she does more -- at the Y I feared that she was getting bored and therefore acting out a bit, and I don't get the sense she's bored at the JCC. In fact, I think they run her a little ragged -- she's been sleeping more at night and taking longer naps on the weekends -- which is great. Today the temperature is in the 30s and I'm psyched to think she's out climbing on the jungle gym.