Mt Ararat Daycare Center

My kids have been going to this day care since they were a little over a year old. They have a nice structure that they follow each day. I see my kids learning well here. All the teachers here are very nice and I can see that they care about all the children.

My two boys go to Mt Ararat daycare! My oldest started there when he was 2 and his brother was 9 months old. So I’ve dealt with all kinds of issues, and let me put them on line and let people ask themselves after visiting the daycare if it’s right for them.
1 disruptive children, my kids went thru a phase early on called biting. And they bite their friends and their friends bite them. Now if one is to believe that a child 2 – 3 years of age is fully cognizant of their actions then call 911 and see what happens !
2 structure of the curriculum at the day care is as good as I’ve seen at any daycare in Chicago, but if you want your kid to eat escargot and stroll thru rose gardens then better open that trust account and lease a ford instead of that BMW.
3 staff, the words love and caring come to mind. I believe in trust ! Do I trust the staff with my sons (you better believe I do) !
Do I have to remind people that the lives and we’ll being of my boys have been in trusted to the Following; ViVi, Maria, Xochitol and others who have went onto other careers.
In conclusion I’d like to say thank you to all the staff at Mt Ararat who have watched over my boys, you have helped them get a step up in life without treating them like spoiled brats, and giving them a loving caring place to grow, learn and have fun!
Why did I give 5 stars, because there wasn’t 6.

Terrible daycare, terrible staff, no responsibility or structure.
This is glorified babysitting. Your child will come back to you with injuries & the staff will be completely unaccountable.
My child was at this center for 6 months and that was clearly a mistake.
There are much better centers that wish to nurture and care for your child in this community — please don’t put your child here!
If I could give zero stars, I would.

If you care for your child, Please, Please DO NOT put your kid in this Day Care.
Unlike the previous reviewer on here, after touring the school and seeing these things. I decided to give the School a try, and as first time parent it was probably one of the biggest mistakes I made, and one of the biggest learning experience I’ve had.
As a parent sometimes your gut tells you one thing, but then logic, and life gets in the way and you decide with logic than gut because you feel you are being to picky, or irrational. Till this day I still feel at fault for putting my daughter there and what she experienced.
I put my daughter there January 2012, When she was 18 months for 3 days a week. Due to what I now know as poor supervision my daughter was bitten at least three times within a 4 month period. I spoke to the center director, and she told me the kids were teething and that they were working on the behavior, and lot of children go through a biting phase around that time. Thought it made sense but I should have not believed that.
Move to three months later I decided to let my nanny go, and have my daughter attend there 5 days a week, and that’s when things feel apart. She was constantly coming home with bite marks on her arms, neck and hand. The teachers that were supposed to be watching the kids were inexperienced for the number of children they were watching, not focused, and just did not give a damn. Several of the older more mature teachers at that point in time had left, and so they replaced them with cheap labor basically. The teachers were student teachers, part of teach for America. How can you have student teachers who just got into their twenties by themselves with 7 – 10 small children under two ?
One day my nanny wanted to see her, and I told her she can pick up my daughter early from school, when she went there my daughter had gotten bit so hard on her face by the same kid her skin broke and bled. She had two puncture wounds with blood. My Nanny was so upset she started crying. She asked them the obvious question, «Have you called her Dad or Mom ?», silence. They had not called me to inform me of the incident. When the nanny notified me, I called them immediately to ask what happened, no one knew? call the director she was out. I rush home to go and see what happened and both me and my spouse started crying. I went there and had a one hour conversation with the Director, she explained that the student worker was not experienced, and a line of excuses. She explicitly told me that she was getting someone from the state to come and monitor the situation, and that she was separating the child that was doing this.
During that conversation I also discovered that, the same little boy that had bitten my daughter was going around bitting several other children, mostly the little girls because they could not really move away. I asked why is this kid allowed to torment the children, answer. We can’t kick children out because we are required to work with kids on the behavior. Real Answer: The little boy had a sibling in the school, and it was two checks coming from them per week instead of my daughters one check per week.
After getting her assurance that this would never happen again, blah blah. I took 4 days and this is where I fault myself to this day, I brought my daughter back there. Within a week she was bitten on her arms by the same kid. I went there that afternoon took all her stuff and went home, and filed a report on that daycare.
These people are unprofessional, they are inexperienced. There goal is not to loose income. They also have a gentlemen there during the day, I think who maybe the directors brother around (Not Cool). Your child safety will be at risk, take it from one parent who still feel guilty to this day that he put his child in there. DONT DO IT, whether its the price, the convenience, the location its not worth your innocents one safety.

I toured Mt Ararat twice, once by myself and then with my 2 and a half year old son. My husband also visited on a separate day. We had just moved to the neighborhood and were looking for a new daycare/​preschool. We really wanted to like this center (just a few blocks from our home) and feel comfortable with it (hence visiting 3 times), but there were a lot of things that concerned us and ultimately, we decided against Mt. Ararat.
1. The website says that the director is a former CPS teacher with many years of experience. Upon asking about this, I learned that the center director is actually the daughter of the former teacher, and the daughter has been running the center for some years now. She said «oh yeah, we haven’t updated the website.»
2. The teachers who I saw on both visits look very, very young. The director said they all were early-​childhood graduates and that may be true, but they can’t have had more than a year or two experience. One teacher was reading a book to some children and her manner of reading had no expression, no inflection, and no enthusiasm at all. She was reading the words, that’s all. I understand that we all have to start somewhere, but the overall youth of the teaching staff concerned us.
3. The classroom space is disorganized and cluttered and small. The area designated as the 2 – 3 year old classroom is in the front of the first room and is separated from the infant area by a low divider wall. The ‘classroom’ for the 2 – 3 year olds did not feel large enough to accommodate 8 – 10 kids. Also, having the infant area in an open space next to another age group made me wonder about the noise level – infants cry a lot! How loud must it get when the infants are upset? Or conversely, how do the infants sleep when there’s a «classroom» of 2 – 3 year olds 3 feet away? This does not seem like an ideal set-​up for either group of children.
4. The center does not feel welcoming or warm. Very little in the way of wall decorations or bulletin boards. The space feels utilitarian and cold. Stark, white walls with little color to catch the eye. Shelves are stacked with supplies and look overloaded. Even the staff lunchroom looked messy with stacks of paper in corners, boxes, and clutter. The director showed me the lunchroom because that is where their hot lunches arrive from a catering company. The menu from the catering company was on display and did look ok, so there is that.
Positive things:
1. Mt. Ararat is affordable. I was quoted a rate of $ 207 a week, full-​time for my son.
2. The director, while not the person described on the website, does seem to care about children and want to provide a safe, nurturing, and educational environment. Maybe there are not enough funds to hire more experienced staff or decorate the center to be more pleasing. Perhaps that’s why they are accepting infants, despite needing to place them next to the 2 – 3 year olds.
3. While the Center did seem cluttered, it did not appear dirty or unsafely unclean.
4. Your child does not have to be potty-​trained to enroll and the teachers will work with the child to learn, when he or she is ready.
5. There is an enclosed outdoor play space in the back that looked pretty cool!
Bottom line – there are better centers out there that have better-​designed space that is more appealing to children and parents. But, Mt. Ararat could be a good choice for parents who need something nearby, affordable, and good enough. But when it comes to your children, is «good enough» acceptable? It wasn’t for us. There is lots of room for improvement at Mt. Ararat.