Aardvark Child Care & Learning Cntr

We have been extremely happy with Aardvark. This center is more like a community and everyone works well together. My children love it here and so do we!

We chose Aardvark for our children because of the qualified, seasoned teachers; however, three of them have abruptly left the facility in the last year. Although the teachers were instrumental in the success of our children, the owner is extremely difficult to work with and runs her business poorly. She does not return phone calls, and she makes changes regarding payments and policies without communicating new procedures to the families. Snow removal is horrendous. If you need to drop your child off early in the morning, you can expect an unsafe lot. I do not recommend sending your child to this center. Look elsewhere.

Every child is different, but my child thrived at this playschool/​kindergarten facility. The staff and the owner were always very attentive and created a warm and fun atmosphere. Although the curriculum is based on play, I found that my child did so well at this school and I would definitely recommend it.
A bonus is that when there were horrible storms that took out power at this location, the staff relocated to their other location in Secane and allowed children to attend there. That was a huge help!

This review is for the preschool program.
This is a clean facility, well stocked with supplies. The daily manager of this facility is a nice woman, who is new the child care business and child development.
You really need to understand your child and their needs before considering this facility. It is a day care that provides about an hour of learning activities a day. It is geared towards complacent, obedient kids who are eager to chill out and go with the flow. If your child has any developmental needs, this is not the place for you. By, this I don’t mean Asperger’s or Autism necessarily, but anything such as any developmental delays, transition issues, «only child» issues, self esteem or confidence issues, etc. This facility does not provide for any developmental «special» needs, no matter how small.
They do have a routine and they do have rules, but do not confuse that with structure. It is an environment where kids are largely free to do what they want to do as long as they don’t break the rules. For discipline, they will tell you that they use 1−2−3 Magic. But, you need to understand that this is all they use. They do not do positive reinforcement. They do not do things like proactive redirection. By only using 1−2−3 Magic they are essentially only providing negative discipline to your child. Since it is unstructured, they let the kids do what they want to do and then discipline them through warnings and timeouts that are treated as punishment and the whole class is made aware. Again, if your kid has any issues, this practice will only make it worse.
The teachers are cordial. The 2 senior teachers are experienced in teaching academics and very traditional classroom management, but don’t seem to have up-​to-​date training on modern and varied behavior management techniques. There is a fairly new teacher who is just out of school.
After reading Kurt W.‘s Unilocal review on this facility and seeing that it was removed from the overall rating, I was prompted to write this. I imagine that some of his frustration stemmed from some of the issues pointed out in this review and I would encourage Unilocal to put his review back into the mix. It’s important for parents to understand the overall philosophy of a facility beyond what they market to you, before you enroll a child. For some kids it’s fine and your child may have a good time here and learn, but for others, it will only hurt them in the long run. Given that about 50% of kids have some sort of a behavior or development issue, it’s likely something you should care about.