I am interested in anyone's experiences with The Learning Experience child care centers. Good or bad?

Question

I am interested in anyone's experiences with The Learning Experience child care centers. Good or bad?

Answer 1

The Learning Experience is owned by the people who started Tutor Time, and the centers look very much like the original Tutor Time design, They have a curriculum that is set by the national office, with not a lot of creativity for kids or teachers. The for-profit chains tend to have a lot of staff turnover and tend to make decisions about things like staffing levels and group placement based on profit, not the good of the child.

     While I agree with the previous writer that NAEYC accreditation is a good thing there are many reasons that some perfectly fine programs don't apply. It's a very time consuming process, and quite expensive. The NAEYC website also has information on what to look for but in general, avoid the for- profit chains. Visit a variety of programs and find one where your child will be comfortable and where the philosophy matches yours. Make sure to visit more than once but don't take your child along until you've narrowed it down.

Answer 2

No personal experience, but just looked at their website and it nearly made me gag.That woman is just barfy and turned me totally off. The pictures make it look great, but it just says "no way" to me.

The centres LOOK nice, but any centre that seems so overly proud of teaching phonics to preschoolers is a big no-no to me.

It also appears that none of the centres are NAEYC accredited, so I would not use them. I don't have much use for a program that is not non-profit and is also not accredited.

The best way to find a centre is to use NAEYC's accredited program search. http://www.naeyc.org/academy/search/ Just enter your town and state and it will give you a list of accredited programs in your area.

I also have problems with a centre that forces a curriculum upon teachers rather than allowing them to develop their own curriculum based on the needs and interests of the children.  (I had to do that once at a centre and it was so demeaning to me as an early childhood professional.)