Such a welcoming and calming environment! Great communication and staff. Peace of mind that my baby is being loved and well cared for while I am gone :)
We absolutely love this daycare! The teachers are truly amazing—caring, patient, and so engaged with the kids. Our child looks forward to going every single day, which says so much about the environment they’ve created. We’ve seen so much growth and happiness, and we feel confident and grateful knowing our little one is in such good hands. Highly recommend!
Lydia (2) loves it at PVMA; for a while, any time we'd get into the car in weekends, she'd hopefully ask if we were going to drive to Ms. Bernice. She's ready to tell us about all her classmates, and she certainly gets far more practice with tasks like dressing herself than she'd get at home. Gene (6) graduated from PVMA last year; he got a solid start to reading at Children's House, and still loves meeting his toddler room buddies for play dates.
We love our son's teacher, Ms. Claudia in the Children's House classroom. She is the perfect blend of firm but loving, and our child has grown so much in the last 6 months. You can tell that she loves being a Montessori teacher, and loves the kids in her classroom.
Our kindergartener went to PVMA from three months old to preschool. When we were transitioning out of PVMA and went to visit the school-based summer camp classroom, his two questions were "where's the library?" and "I've seen where you play, but where do you work?" He also really benefitted from the mixed-age group in preschool, learning both to play up and to play down. With so many school-age activities age-tracked, we've been missing that (though we found some of it at Cub Scouts).
Our toddler has been at PVMA since three months old as well, and whenever we drive somewhere on weekends, she ask if it's to her teacher Ms. Bernice. We've just started potty training, and (just as with the first kid) our experience is that PVMA is great at teaching this skill; both kids seem to have picked it up instantly at school, whereas at home progress was quite slow.
Mostly, we just love that the children are happy both to be dropped off and to be picked up; that's what you hope for with a daycare, and PVMA definitely delivers.
Montessori gives kids independence and autonomy. As a mom of a baby, I appreciate that he isn’t in “containers” all day but has freedom to move and explore!
I love how the environment fosters learning through exploration and independence. The teachers are kind, but also hold boundaries with the kids. It is also nice that the kids are outside rain or shine, and get to enjoy nature in all of its forms. We had Ms. Geissell as our infant teacher 5 years ago, and it is great to see such a wonderful teacher be given the opportunity for leadership. It's easy for many companies to either promote someone with the wrong skillset, or from outside the company. She is great in her role, and that was one of the reasons we returned to PVMA.