Berkeley, CA
A Brighter Today

Parents' Comments

Parent #1
Inclusion program to include medically fragile children is wonderful. Health of all kids is constantly watched by on-site nurses.

Parent #2
A brighter today is a wonderful place for children to learn and grow. The teachers make each child feel special and attends to the needs of each individual child. This is also a place for children with special needs. Which is so wonderful to find a place with plenty of patience. Each day filled with learning and adventures. Everyweek they learn about a different culture and have a letter of the week. They have special projects like songs, making art, learning foriegn words, sign language, scissor practice,celebrating holidays like black history month and chinese new year, learning how to make things like lemonade, excerise and much more. I really like the way the teachers keep things in order and move through the day with different attention acttics, that keep the children interested. They make u feel very welcome the minute u arrive and until the minute the day ends.It is also a smaller ratio of children to teachers with I love..on rainy days they have a room with bikes and skill building equiptment when they can't go on there nature walk.

Parent #3
Shortly after our son began with ABT in mid-2007 the program experienced a series of staff changes, for a variety of personal and professional reasons, which caused us to monitor the program's "fit" with our needs, values, and style more closely. I am pleased to say that our son continues to thrive at ABT, and the program handled the multiple transitions with sensitivity to both the children's and their parents needs. Things have stabilized more recently and the program seems to be hitting its stride as the staff and the program find their niche. The biggest "pluses" we find with ABT are the low staff-to-child ratio (1:4), which helps the staff to form a personal relationship with our child, and the integration of medically fragile children in the program, which has encouraged our "typically developing" son's empathy and appreciation for people's differences. Historically, there are frequently foreign preschoolers in the program, primarily as a result of the proximity to the UC Berkeley campus (convenient to visiting scholar families), which brings further diversity to the program. Our son is counting in multiple languages (english, spanish, norwegian, farsi/persian, german,...)and learns his alphabet in english, braille, and sign language. The pace of our son's development and his excitement at "going to school" (he *runs* into the school each day) are our best evidence that this is a successful preschool program. The primary disadvantage of ABT from our perspective is really an aspect of the location rather than the program itself -- ABT is located on the site of an old elementary school, so the playground is not toddler-oriented. The program has created a safe, enclosed outside play area, but it is not as rich an outside environment for "free play" as you might find in other preschool settings.

Parent #4
Discipline is handled very well. Children are redirected and are reminded to use their manners, saying please, thank you and yes.

Montessori? Waldorf? Play-based?

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