C. Gardens Prep School

Reviews (2)

• Review from the Spring 2022 Early Childhood Education Survey

  July 2022

  Location: Prospect lefferts gardens Type of facility: Preschool Review: I have only good things to say about C Gardens Prep. The kids actually play outside in the cool backyard a ton, the director Felicia and head teacher Mari are so loving, and Mari supported our daughter with Spanish as an English language learner (and leads the whole class in Spanish three mornings a week). They take field trips places, go to prospect park and the library, and are always learning fun things. Highly, highly recommend. What amenities does the facility have? Has outdoor space, Has after-school options, Has early morning hours

• Review from the 2016/2017 PSP Daycare, Preschool, PreK, Kindergarten Survey

  July 2017

  About the facility: Has outdoor space, Has afterschool options, Has early morning hours, weekly yoga, Spanish, music classes; field trips and thoughtfully structured curriculum Review: Our daughter loved loved loved her time at C Gardens Prep starting at 25 months last year, and we were pretty happy with the program too - we only left because we moved out of state this spring (and we've not yet found a equivalent, sad to say). Pros: Felicia is the very energetic and bubbly owner/operator but day-to-day the classes were led by Miss Maricruz (our favorite) and Miss B. The facility is newly redone, sunny and bright and has direct/sole access to a backyard with playstructure, sandbox and garden box. They are also a 5 minute walk from the Lincoln Road playground at Prospect Park and the rest of Prospect Park for that matter - so our daughter had outdoor time nearly every day, sometimes twice a day. They even took a "field trip" on a city bus over to the Public Library - an outing our daughter chattered about for weeks! In addition there is daily immersion Spanish exposure with Miss Mari, and visiting teachers for yoga and music classes each week (our daughter was a big fan of Miss Rebecca the yoga instructor); they do follow a "curriculum" and have academic aims as well, which was nice as it gave us weekly topics of conversation to go over with our daughter at home. They had the option of early and late pick up as well. And because it was still new (less than a year old) it was below max capacity when we were enrolled, which meant our daughter had a lot of individualized care and attention, and she really thrived. We potty trained during this time, and the staff was GREAT about supporting our efforts/methods. They also took on students shy of the 2 year mark and I wish I had known that because we would have started sooner! Cons: I only had a few complaints, which we just dealt with because the positives so outweighed them for us. There were many holidays/school closures including a week after Christmas and a week around Passover, so in that regard it was more like a school than a daycare in addition to the fact the "regular" hours are not long enough to cover a typical full time work day (ending at 4 or 430) so many parents had to elect to pay more for late pickup/early pickup (which added to tuition); the tuition was more than any in-home or center based options in the nearby vicinity - in light of excellent programming I thought they could justify this IF they also just extended the hours but paying more for tuition plus also paying extra for "late" pickup (at 6pm?!) might make it harder for more families to justify the program. What would you change about the program, if anything, and why? I was a bit turned off at my 2 year old getting 'homework worksheets' to reinforce the lessons they covered each week - not a big deal, we just ignored them, but for myriad reasons I didn't think that was appropriate and in my perfect world they would have dropped those for the youngest kids.