Sakura Daycare

We miss Sakura!
Sadly, every tyke eventually grows up, and has to leave daycare, and we were so SAD!!! Sakura Daycare has been such an important and wonderful part of our family’s life for the past six years. Both of our sons were at Sakura, and we loved it so much, we maybe left them there a little longer than we should have.
Chishiro is as close to a perfect daycare provider that I could imagine. Energetic, involved, creative, loving, firm, and caring. I was impressed at her ability to love and tenderly care for the children in her care while simultaneously being firm and stead with them. She loves them, and doesn’t spoil them — that’s why the kids that come out of Sakura are happy, respectful, well-​rounded children. I only wish I were as good a parent as Chishiro is!
In addition, Chishiro has a knack for creating a real sense of community at her daycare. She has events and gatherings for parents and families — some of our good friends are people we met through Sakura, and we love that many parents still like to check in with Chishiro and with the other parents and kids.
We miss going there every day — if there is a spot available at Sakura, I highly recommend you get your kid enrolled before someone else gets the spot!

My husband and I cannot praise Chishiro and her assistants enough, they are amazing. Just to give you an idea of how much our daughter loves Sakura Daycare, she has been coming here since she was 4 months old and even to this day as a 19 month she is always excited and all smiles to see Chishiro and her assistants. I grew up speaking Japanese so naturally the language emersion is how I found SDC. However, there are many more qualities about this place that make SDC very special. First, I can probably speak for all the other parents when I say the kids eat better than we do. They get to eat delicious, well-​balanced, homecooked meals every day. This is especially a perk for working parents as you don’t have to worry about food prep every night. Chishiro also sends daily feeds of update pictures with the menu of the day, which brings me to my second point. She is very communicative and leaves herself available for any questions you may have throughout the day, and will be the first to let you know if she has questions or concerns. Third, they not only teach the children Japanese, baby sign language, but also Spanish, which I am very excited about. I speak Japanese to my daughter but she is also able to understand English and Spanish. The kids also get to participate in a variety of group activities (in addition to play time), such as Judo, cooking class, story time, singing, and dancing. We cannot recommend this place enough!

My daughter is 22 months and has been attending Sakura Daycare for 1.5 months. I am very happy with the caregivers in Sakura Daycare. Everyone is very kind, my daughter loves to go to her Daycare. She is always excited to see the teachers in the morning. She is so happy that even my older daughter wants to join. Sakura daycare has many fun activities for children to play. She would come home with artworks and cupcake that she baked from school. She is eating extremely well at school too because Chishiro makes nutritious organic meal everyday. Moreover, Chishiro would upload pictures daily to let parents see what their children are doing. I am so glad to see my kid happy and healthy knowing that she is with good hands.

My son was 18 months old when he started attending Sakura, only 3 days out of the week. He is now 27 months and attending 4 days. We (parents) and my son love Chishiro (the owner) and her assistants Ana, Maria, and Kaoru. They are truly an amazing team. I only speak Spanish to my son and it is being reinforced at sakura with Ana and Maria. He is even learning Japanese and English! It’s amazing how his language and social skills have grown. He is well fed organic home made meals and that’s a plus for me, he gets all his veggies and fish.
The caliber of Chishiro’s knowledge on child development has surpass the many interviews we had at other daycares before deciding on Sakura. The schedule is very organized and structured with plenty of fun. From cooking class, art, music, to judo. Plenty of time outside in the beautiful backyard or visiting the zoo, park, or habitot museum.
My son now knows his colors in Spanish, English, Japanese, and some sing language. He is all smiles
when I drop him off and if he has a bad day Chishiro is always updating me, sending me txts or pics.
I highly recommend Sakura daycare with Chishiro the owner and lovely Maria, Ana, and Kaoru they have enriched my son’s weekdays.

My children stayed at Sakura Daycare for a little less than 6 months. I was surprised at how much Japanese phrases they learned from Chishiro (and even some spanish from her assistant). They were fed breakfast, lunch and dinner, so all we had to do was drop them off with their baby bag and they were taken care of. She does cloth diapers, so we purchased diaper liners and she took care of the rest. No diapers to pack in the baby bag, other than clean liners.
Chishiro took the kids out to the zoo and to the park, etc on a regular basis and let them out in the backyard daily (unless it was raining really hard or something). My kids learned something everyday, whether it may be a Japanese phrase, or a song. I loved the birthday parties she threw for the kids.
I would highly recommend Chishiro and her great staff to any parent.

My son has been attending the Sakura Daycare for the last 2 years. Two main reasons that I chose the daycare — 1) Japanese language immersion and 2) home cooked– healthy meals. After spending sometime, I realized there are other positive aspects.
Food: It’s great quality food. It’s great for working parents to have 3 meals plus snacks provided. Chishiro (owner) makes sure that all kids have a good balanced diet. She is flexible enough to accommodate kids who need to eat more, less or some other diet restrictions. She provides Japanese and some more American food. Parents will have an opportunity, at least, once a year for taste what she provides to kids.
Communication: Some of negative comments below address lack of communication. She prepares a sheet for every kid informing parents number of bowel movement, pee, amount of nap, and amount of food they ate. Even if you don’t get to talk to a care provider that day, you will get an idea of basic things. In addition, you receive photos every day. The daycare closes at 5:30pm. I, personally, think that parents should arrive early, at least by 5:20pm, if they have any questions about their kids. I personally feel that I should ask questions, wrap up my son’s play and leave the day care by 5:30 pm, not arrive by 5:30pm. If I e-​mail or text Chishiro for a question, she was also available.
Activities — She has a basic schedule. Again you will see what kids do each day because you can see photos. Sometime kids come back home with art project or some backed items. She also take kids to occasional field trips if parents provide consent. Sometimes kids walk to a nearby parks. As the weather has been nice, they have been spending a lot of time outside. My son loves playing outside. She has a good amount of outdoor and indoor toys as well as books in Japanese and English. Chishiro balances out activities with some academic instructions (numbers, Japanese and English alphabets), art, songs, reading, cooking, and exploring senses outside.
Cloth diaper/​Potty training: She provides cloth diapers with no extra charges. It’s a bonus for me. Also, she and her staff are patiently assisting potty training for my son. My son is making a progress, but it has been taking a while as he does not care about being wet…
Flexibility: Above all, she is flexible enough to accommodate some individual needs. Every child is different, and she tries her best to accommodate those needs as long as those are reasonable or does not take too much time away from caring other kids.
Language: I sent him to this daycare because it’s Japanese immersion. He is turning 3 and is multilingual (Japanese, Spanish and English). His strongest language is Japanese. One of the daycare staff is teaching him Spanish. We (parents) don’t teach him English, but he is learning English somehow with his daycare buddies and by listening to others. Raising a multilingual kid is not easy. My son understands what he hears in Japanese, English and Spanish, but his ability to construct a sentence is below average. I know it will come in time, and he will catch up. Parents should know that multilingual children demonstrate a different patterns of language development compared to monolingual children, but learning language at early age provide grate benefits.
One more response to a negative comment regarding late fees — These days late fees are expensive at many places. Chishiro spells out late fees in annual contract, so it should not be a surprise to parents. For the current year, it is $ 2 per minute. It’s more than when we started 2 years ago. If you arrange an extended care 24 hour in advance, you will pay an hourly fee not late charge by minute.

Our son is all smiles when time to go to school.
Herewith some of the great things about Sakura Daycare:
1. Food — Homemade meals 3 times a day using healthy ingredients.
2. Thoughtful — They provide organic milk, snacks, cloth diapers, and disposable diapers to go home with.
3. Activities — They teach songs, art, cooking, judo, ASL, Japanese, Spanish and more! (He can count 1 – 10 in 3 languages and he is only 2 years and 1 month old)
4. Get dirty — They let kids play in backyard as much as possible, pick fruits in their backyard and eat!
5. Bonus — Sometimes they take the kids to fields trips (a few kids at a time). Overnight sleep over!
We were also very happy with his previous daycare but we had to take food, milk, snacks, diapers, and it adds up, not only $ but washing little containers/​bottles and having to think what to make lunch tomorrow etc. You don’t have to worry about that here.
We are grateful for this daycare and see our son flourish!

My son has been coming to this daycare since he was five months old (he will be 3 next month) and I could not be more satisfied. When I had to go back to work (after maternity leave), I was so concerned about finding the right daycare for my baby. I couldn’t be more thankful to have found such a wonderful environment for my son! Chishiro cares for the children as if they were her own and is «top-​notch» when it comes to organization, education, and management. Each day, she serves the children home-​cooked organic meals and involves the children in such learning activities as cooking, gardening, art & crafts, music, dance, judo, gymnastics, and reading. At Sakura, there is a large backyard for the children to run and play. There are also outdoor play structures and a wide variety of bikes, wagons, and riding toys to keep the kids busy and active. The children have a structured day, with consistent meal, nap, and activity times. Chishiro writes everything down on a slip of paper that she gives to the parent each day, so that when you pick up your child you know exactly what time they ate and napped and also their potty times throughout the day. And you never have to wonder about the day’s activities, since Chishiro takes photos (and records videos) throughout the day and then emails them to all of the parents each afternoon! How great is that?! I should also specify that this is a Japanese daycare and that all of the children eventually become bilingual, even if you are like me and do not speak Japanese yourself. Honestly, I cannot compliment Chishiro enough! I strongly recommend Sakura Daycare (Early Preschool) …if you bring your child here, you will not be disappointed.

I highly recommend Sakura Daycare, run by Chishiro Newman. She is a dependable and responsible caregiver. My son 2 yo and my daghter 4yo go there since last year. Each day, Chishiro prepares variety of organic meals for the kids, and my kids eat better at daycare than home! She also uses cloth diaper and my son’s diaper rash dramatically improved. Each day she has special activities for the kids and she even purchases toddler outfit for Judo and cooking and it is so cute to look at the pictures that she takes daily and shares with us online. My husband waits for those pics everyday and look at them at work. She also teaches sigh language and it is so cute, when my kids do the baby sign at home. My kids picked up Japanese pretty quickly and they can now talk to my parents in Japan on the phone in Japanese. She really loves children and is a very caring person. You can be at work peacefully, knowing that your kids are in great hands.

Spoke to Chishiro Newman, owner of Sakura Daycare, as I was interested in checking out her daycare for my daughter. She indicated that she had a part-​time opening — Monday/​Wednesday/​Friday starting next month — and then a full-​time opening at the end of August. In no uncertain terms, she indicated that I *had* to take that arrangement before I could visit her daycare. She said she didn’t want «strangers» coming to her daycare because «kids cannot relax.»
Wow… I mean, I understand how you wouldn’t want strangers rolling through your daycare all the time, but really, how is a prospective parent supposed to check out your daycare? And seriously, why would I commit to enrolling my daughter part-​time next month before I could even see your center?
Ass backwards.