Navarre United Methodist Preschool

This preschool scores high on the Kindergarten assessments. My lesson learned....Just because a school has high scores does NOT make them the best. My child’s class had 15 or 16 children and two teachers. The teacher completed an assessment at the beginning of the year with categories of “exceeding expectations”, “meeting expectations”, or “below expectations”. The goal is to have each child exceeding expectations at the end of the year. At the beginning of the school year, my child met or exceeded expectations in every category...only about 5 or 6 children in the class were below expectations according to our teacher. The entire first half of the year was spent focusing on those children. I felt that my child was left behind because they were in the top third of the class. After Christmas break, my child began a new school. The new class consists of 11 children and only 1 teacher (a higher ratio than NUMC). Within four weeks of being in the new school, my child is reading and doing simple math not to mention super excited to go everyday. The teacher and the director at Navarre UMC preschool told me that these expectations (among others) were too high. Navarre UMC’s preschool schedule allowed for a VERY long outdoor time and SHORT structured learning time. In a 3 hour VPK day:

- A half hour was spent in free play with table top toys
- One hour was spent outside with approximately a half hour spent preparing to go out and regrouping once back inside.
- A half hour spent for snack time.

This left only a half hour for structured class time!

The new school spends a half hour outside, one and half hours for class time and centers (which always includes 1-on-1 time), a half hour for circle time where they read stories, sing songs, and talk about the theme for the day and learn Spanish. They also spend a half hour on a morning snack.

Hope this helps make an informed decision about this school.