Windsor Preschool

t was very difficult for us to figure out the preschool of choice for our daughter. It is always a difficult choice but one made more difficult by 3 major issues:
1) DIVERSE SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT: My husband's education styles varies wildly from mine: He was taught Montessori and then homeschooled by the same method and I was taught in an extremely academic/little fun/lots of competition style of school.
2) EDUCATION WITH FUN: We wanted a school that would fit our child's very active lifestyle, still let her have fun but also truly prepare her for not just school but life.
3) RESPECT FOR DIVERSITY: We are trying to teach our child the languages from both of us as well as ensure she thrives in the amazingly diverse environment we live in. We have friends that come from all over the world as we both come from diverse backgrounds and were looking for a school that represents how we spend our time as a family with diverse friends and fun relatives.

How the heck can one combine all these 3 challenges and still stay married -you'd ask? Well first off I prepared a Google document of 10+ schools including the Google daycare ranking all 3 factors & how aligned my husband and I were. Misalignment was the word of the day until 1 year ago we went to meet Ms. Shanam.

We both felt that this was the place that people truly care. Ms. Shanam shared how the school draws from several disciplines of child development (Montessori, Reggio Emillia & Scaffolding) so the child discovers the lesson intended in their own way or even better creates their own lesson. Seeing this in action when we first met Ms. Simanti and our daugther hug the teacher after their first full day -This addressed my first concern.

Our daugther has been going to Windsor for the summer and non summer program and I see first hand the EDUCATION WITH FUN piece. We had a picnic to celebrate the start of the new year and she ran into the arms of her professors Sahil & Chris. Not only is the school both educational and fun but we get to read all that she does in notes each day. For someone that travels a lot for work, seeing these notes on how she puts makeup on her professors, and reads to dogs and makes her own art or loves learning new languages (Hindi, Spanish, Sign language) makes this all worthwhile.

Lastly the respect for diversity is awesome to see taught in a very experiential way. We get together each week as parents in this amazing curated community to hang out, picnic, bbq and I can see how each child is bilingual and bilingual is the new English for Windsor Academy. You hear Hebrew and Hindi and Greek and English and Russian and each language brings forth the culture and it's great to see children learn respect interactively rather than via a lesson.