Happy Sunshine Kids Preschool & Infant Center

I took my eldest daughter here 3 years ago for her first preschool experience. The school is nice and clean. But I feel that the teachers were always so tense, like they are afraid of the owner. She is some British lady. I took her out after a few months, and went to another preschool. Oh, it is such a difference!!!

My daughter has been at Happy Sunshine Kids for about 4 months now, and I would highly recommend this facility and the staff! Since the beginning, they have been extremely flexible to our family’s changing schedule. The teachers seem to be very interested in the children and their well-​being and in building lasting relationships with the kids and their parents. The administration of the center seems to be very organized and thorough. 5 stars!

I am very happy with my child here. The director Jasmine is great! The teachers are all very wonderful with the children.

Please don’t send your kids here, especially infants. There are too many teachers in the infant room taking care of 8 babies and they take turns too often so there’s not really one teacher that fully concentrates to take care of your baby. So you are never sure if they all fully keep themselves clean or keep the place, toys and things clean all the time. The carpet looks old and need to be replaced but the teachers often have the babies on the dirty looking carpet. Also the teachers don’t look trustworthy. Jasmine look like she’s not always telling the truth. And Sarah the owner is hardly there, hard to reach her and you can’t contact her because the facility refuse to give you her number to contact. How ridiculous is that? Why? Something fishy is going on, that’s why! And she refuse to give you back the tuition for withdrawing my babies without 30 days notices. How can I give 30 days notice when I had to withdraw my baby from being sick after staying in the hospital for 4 – 5 days because of being severely sick from this school? So please do not send your babies to this school! Send them somewhere else if you don’t want them sick.

First off, I had a very hard time finding any day care with space available in Pasadena for a three month old. We were on many waiting lists.
I finally found a home day care in Arcadia (I’m not totally comfortable with home day care) and signed up my little one a few weeks before maternity leave was over. It was the Only place with space available.
But right after finding the home day care, I found Happy Sunshine kids and took a tour.
The owner was there to give me the grand tour. She was very nice and easy to talk to. The day care was very clean, had a good daily class structure (posted up for all to see), the teachers (from all walks of life) were friendly and the kids, well, they were Happy!
So I signed our baby up right then and there.
We’ve been there for a month. My little one Loves her teachers and smiles when she sees them. When I pick her up in the evening, she’s usually cuddled up for a nap with her favorite teacher.
The infant room is clean and bright with lots of toys for the children. There is a little nap room with cribs and mats and a large observation window. The ratio is 4 children to 1 adult maximum. 8 children are in the infant room. They also have a covered outdoor area for the infants.
The building is unmarked (no sign), but big and bright yellow (with a fire station across the street :-)! The building has a secured door which you must be buzzed into.
They are always having little events, like a Cinco De Mayo potluck lunch, Mother’s day Tea, etc…
And they offer parent’s night out babysitting on some weekends.
The tuition is more than many places, but not the most expensive. And they are very flexible with tuitions and schedules.
This place is a blessing for our family.
My advice to soon to be parents, start looking for day care as soon as you get pregnant. It’s a jungle out there!

For anyone who is thinking about writing a review about happy sunshine, whether it be negative or positive, be aware. I wrote a negative review about them. My review was very useful to those who are thinking about sending your kids here. But, after I posted the review, it was deleted the next day. I guess they didn’t like hearing the truth. let’s see how long it will take them to delete this message. no worries, the review will also be on better business bureau.

My last review was over 2 years ago and I’ve been asked to update it by a Unilocaler. My update: Still 5 stars.
We have been at HSK since my son was 18 months. He is now 4 years old and we are still happy. That should say a lot. I am of the belief that no school is PERFECT. You simply have to decide what’s most important to you and compare that to the school’s philosophy.
What continues to stand out to me about HSK is the staff. The teachers are patient, caring, loving yet strict when necessary, and just add so much warmth to the school. My son has learned so much in the past 3.5 years, which is important to me. I don’t believe in a very strict pre-​school curriculum, but I do like that he gets homework every week (handed out on Monday, due on Friday) and that there is designated reading time, math time, art time, play time. Homework starts in Room 4. We have also signed him up for Spanish & Reading after school programs. He is learning a lot in both of those. I’m confident he will be ready for Kindergarten by the time he leaves HSK next year.
Another thing I absolutely LOVE about HSK is that they truly get to know your family & your child. They truly cater to individual families. The care about your situation, your goals, your struggles… whatever they may be and they help where possible. For us, that is my son’s allergies and reflux. They are so incredible to him and never make him feel differently than the other kids. My son is very confident and outgoing… I completely credit that to the confidence that these teachers have given my son.
If there is one small criticism, it would be that the after school classes are too expensive for what they are. Often times, the teachers are changing and the schedule is not consistent. We do Reading & Spanish 5 days a week because of the teachers for those classes. My son is also full time so I wanted him in some sort of activity after official pre-​school hours. If they are not in a class, they do get to play, do art, etc. It’s not completely void of any activity. I just chose to put him in the classes.
The school is a bit expensive compared to others in the area and we have attended some of the others. HSK has been worth every single penny.

Someone asked for this update, so here it goes.
I agree the tuition is quite expensive. My daughter has been in the school for 4 months. The teachers are great! My daughter is advanced so her teacher takes the time out to prepare lessons that caters to her. She does not receive homework because she knows how to do the work already, which I disagree with, but I take the blame because I have not expressed my concerns.
I appreciate how the teacher respects our religious beliefs and creates activities that my daughter can participate in.
New Cons:
The mats and the sandbox. We take our own crib sheet and blanket, I do not like how the kids sleep on different mats daily. I wish they were assigned mats. I am not sure about their cleaning habits. I do know that my daughter has started to break out in rashes all over and these are types of rashes we have not ever seen before until now. I have a dermatology appointment on Friday to confirm cause. I would like to see the staff clean more. The facility always smells on Monday morning and i do not know when they clean those mats.
I have my daughter in 1 activity and she loves it, they are a little expensive but, its better than taking her to activities after I get off of work.
I hope this helps.

So, if you read my two previous rave reviews of HSK, you are going to be surprised to learn that we have withdrawn our son from the school. Nothing horrible; we’ve just learned a lot about what we value in childcare and realized that HSK was not meeting those needs. We started at the beginning of October and were very happy for about 6 weeks. As time went by, though, the class size increased from 4 – 6 kids to 9 – 11 kids. The director added an assistant to the classroom, but it was only the front desk person and the poor woman was running absolutely ragged trying to cover front desk, all the errands she used to do (like bringing food to every classroom, plus a hundred other things), in addition to trying to spend time with the kids in the 2yo classroom. A sweet woman, but she clearly had limited childcare experience and was not an adequate assistant for the room. Therefore there were 9 – 10 kids all cooped up in a small classroom with the head teacher turned into crowd control officer in an increasingly zoo-​ey atmosphere. Not ideal.
Then it got «chilly» outside. Like, low 60s, And the head teacher was cold, so she rarely took the kids outside any more! After a rainy day, no one dried off the play structures, so the kids didn’t get to go out to play, even if the teacher wanted to take them outside. I talked to her and the director a number of times about this, and nothing changed. You just cannot keep 10 2 year olds stuck inside all day long! She even started having lunch at 10:30 «because the kids are bored.» Ummm … go outside!
See, none of this is really terrible. We just realized that we have different values. Here’s what we realized we wanted, and what we weren’t getting at HSK: a nurturing environment with lots of love, open-​ended play, dancing, singing, reading lots of stories, pretend play, messy artwork, learning through kid-​driven experiences, gardening, lots of outdoors time in dirt and trees and grass and water. And, a focus on helping him learn how to not hit or snatch when frustrated. We found a wonderful place that offers this and more, and we are happy that we have made the switch, even though there were some positive things about HSK.
My advice about any childcare after going through this experience: take time to really evaluate the situation. Spend a lot of time there with your child, at various times of the day. Really pay attention to things. What do they do about hitting? Is there an overarching philosophy, or do they just say «no hitting» or «stop snatching» or «time out»? What do they do with art? Is it messy, kid-​driven creativity, or are the kids just pressing glued cotton and pieces of paper onto the teacher’s pre-​cut designs? Are the kids actually spending time in music and dance and playing outside and other activities, or is the facility being under-​used? What are snacks like? Healthy, or just Cheez Nips and Rice Krispies? Is the director available, or absent for days, even weeks, at a time? Do you see changes when you raise a concern with the teacher or director, or do things stay the same? What is the educational background of the teacher and assistant, what were their previous childcare situations, and how much childcare experience have they actually had? Is your child hitting more after spending time there, or is she learning how to use «gentle hands»?
Our son misses his teacher and the other kids in the classroom whom he started with in October (he doesn’t even know the names of all the new kids who were added). I would say that this is not a purely negative review, but that we have certainly had a learning experience. We are grateful to all that HSK offered our son in the first 6 weeks or so that he was there, but we were also glad to leave.
Update February 2012:
I’ve received so many Unilocal queries about where we ended up sending our son that I wanted to update this review with that information. We sent him to Little Bohemians at first — see my Unilocal review. Then when he was old enough, we sent him to an incredible nursery school –The Sierra Madre Community Nursery School. We l-​o-​v-​e this co-​op! Magical, wonderful, grounded, loving, playful … sooo amazing.

I saw the other bad review few days ago, but now it’s gone!
I went there to have consultation with the owner. She was very nice. However, there isn’t enough teacher for so many kids and there’s one teacher with heavy accent of her English!
They do not provide healthy food over there, it’s all fast food and you can get it in burgerking.
I will not let my kid go there~

I tried to enroll my child here when he was an infant. These people gave us the biggest run around. They are extremely snooty and obnoxious. During the walk-​through, another parent who was present told us that there was a very high turn-​over with the staff. Personally I did not like the facilities. They looked very run-​down and dirty.

I love this place. It is an exceptional day care for children. It is always clean, the staff is friendly, experienced, and wonderful with my daughter. The outdoor playground is shielded from the sun and safe. It is not all play however, as there is academics at appropriate levels throughout the day. I am particularly impressed with the level of security at the facility. The front entrance is via a security door only, therefore there is no way in for the unfamiliar or suspicious element. I highly recommend Happy Sunshine Kids for your most precious possession. I have certainly gone through many bad experiences at other schools before coming here.