Genius Kids

We had our son at this preschool for a few months before we ended up finding a better place for him.
There were lots of positives, I’ll start with those.
The facility was new when we joined, and very clean. The front door was always locked so we felt our child was safe. The staff and teachers were very kind and loving, we never felt like he was neglected or wasn’t treated well there.
Note that this school is pretty highly academic. I really like that they teach letters early and that public speaking is an important skill. On the other hand, do 2-​year-​olds really need homework? To be fair, the homework consisted of «learn this song» or something like that, but it seemed silly to us.
The food was okay, not great. They had an American option and an Indian option. It was prepared elsewhere and brought in, unlike most preschools in town where they prepare the food fresh onsite.
We were actually quite happy with what they did for naptime — they actually had real cribs for the youngest kids, and cots for the older ones. They did their best to keep it quiet and dark. We believe sleep is important and many daycares we visited didn’t seem to make enough effort to encourage it, or to make it a good environment for those kids who have a harder time falling asleep.
They were great at communicating — every day we got a sheet with information about eating, sleeping, diapers, etc.
I think their main strength is really the morning preschool — from about 9am to 12pm, when they watch educational videos, then play games associated with the lessons. It seemed fun and the kids were learning things.
They offer a full-​day program, which we had our son in since we both work, but we found it more disappointing. They didn’t have an early drop-​off option, so it wasn’t very good for our commutes. Also, when we picked him up in the afternoon we found that sometimes the kids were sitting around watching TV. That was totally unexpected and disappointing, and one of the main factors that led us to search elsewhere. We’re not even anti-​TV, but we don’t think it’s okay for an expensive preschool/​daycare to be using TV as a way to keep the kids happy instead of playing with them and engaging them.
One last note: the owner and director is Rennu Dhillon, or «Miss Rennu». She seems to be doing a good job of running the centers, and the business is growing quickly, so she’s clearly doing something right. We were impressed by her when we first met her. Over time, though, we discovered that she’s quite full of herself.
She has several websites gushing about how awesome she is. Her bio always includes DSc. next to her name, but it turns out that it’s a degree in Pharmacy and Natural Sciences from 1981. While having an advanced degree is nice, I hardly see how that’s relevant. Her bio lists absolutely no coursework in early childhood education.
Like many other preschools, they have an occasional «pajama day» or «hat day». However, they also have a «dress like Miss Rennu day». You’ve got to be kidding me.
Also, considering how academic they were I wasn’t really impressed that they had misspellings and grammar errors in worksheets and in signs posted around the building. It didn’t really matter because the majority of them were words not intended for the kids to read, but still, it didn’t give me much confidence in their high academic standards if they’re confused by «there», «they’re», and «their».