• Jewish Community Services Olam Yeladim After School Program
• Redwood Heights After-School care

Redwood Heights After-School care

Does anyone have any information about or recommendations for after-school programs for kindergartners at Redwood Heights Elementary School? I would be interested in learning about the programs' structure, content, etc., hours and pricing. Thanks very much!

There are two kindergarten extension programs that actually provide a full day of care, Chatham School and the JCC.

Chatham is next door to RHS, and is a full day preschool. They walk the children to RHS for kindergarten and pick them up afterward. It's moderately expensive. People seem reasonably pleased with it, though I didn't love it when I looked at it, and found the director hard to focus and somewhat disorganized. There are quite a few children from Redwood Heights at Chatham, so they often build nice friendships over the course of the year.

The JCC is off-site and offers a van to their program at their site. One thing I did not like about this was the time the children seemed to spend on the van... They went to more than one school to pick up, so they could conceivably spend a fair amount of time on the bus. The parents I know who have had children in the program seem very pleased with it. There was some fear that they might cancel the program last year, but I gather that that has been resolved.

Other options:

The Rec Center has a MWF ''Tiny Tots'' program that many have used for childcare. Last year they tried to get it going 5 days, with hours from 8:30-start of school, but didn't get enough enrollment: They cancelled the 8:30-9 time in November, and then the T/Th section for the Spring. This was a real hassle for us, as we were continually having to shift our poor kindergarteners schedule around, not to mention the problems with work schedules. We ended up using the family home daycare that our younger daughter used for morning care on the T/TH, which wasn't ideal either.

In terms of after school care, Rockets, at the Rec Center is open to K-er's, but is not an ideal situation. It's quite a large program with children of all ages. They don't segregate the younger ones, which I think works better. You can get a sense of that program by wandering by the park around 3:30 every day. We use it one day a week for our 1st grader and 4th grader, and neither one of them loves it. They do have classes so if you want to sign your child up for them, it makes it somewhat better. We particularly love the ballet program for our 1st grade daughter.

One thought that we had last year was First Covenant's Treehouse preschool, but we couldn't work out the details of getting our child from First Covenant to the school and back again.

We also got a student from Holy Names to pick up and babysit one day a week, which has worked out pretty well. It actually doesn't end up being a whole lot more than paying for two children at Rockets, and the kids seem to like it more.

As you can tell, I've done fairly exhaustive research on the subject. You can contact me for more information. Myriam