Discovery Isle Child Development Center

My son and daughter both attended Discovery Isle and we had such a great experience. My son attended 13 years ago and my daughter just recently graduated from Pre-​K. My children were both very shy toddlers, but after attending 3 years of preschool at Discovery Isle, both have improved social and academic skills. I believe that caring teachers and staff put great focus on developing my children. When they both graduated from Pre-​K, they evolved into outgoing and articulate people. My children learned their colors, shapes, numbers, letters, sounds of letters and eventually reading. They enjoyed creating artwork and singing. I highly recommend this preschool

Please do yourself a favor and don’t put your infant in this place. Speaking from experience, I had to take my infant out and place them into an in home daycare where they are much better off, especially in those early years. As a first time mom I had no clue what to look out for when searching for a daycare and chose to put my baby here based on affordability, location from work and the cameras they offer. I will NEVER put my baby or future baby into this daycare again. It was so disheartening watching the cameras everyday. Leaving my child was hard at the time so I was on the camera A LOT! I reached the point where I could no longer watch because I felt like such a horrible mom keeping him in this daycare center and cried every time I brought him home. I went on mission to do anything possible to get him out asap.
First of all there are way too many babies in the infant room that every time I picked up my baby the girls looked so overwhelmed and every baby would be laying on the floor screaming or crying! They would just say the babies are tired or having a bad day or tell me they have a lot of babies. Really?! I couldn’t imagine my baby having to listen to that every hour of everyday! Every time I picked my baby up, my baby looked SO overtired from no naps and would scream and cry on the way home… Everyday! It broke my heart. Your baby will not get any attention here with the amount of babies they have. Expect your baby to lay on a bobby that is shared with every single baby there and not even cleaned… And they are just kept in one spot the majority of the day on the floor. Seriously?! It’s soo important to move babies around and stimulate them and interact with them AND have them take naps during the infant stage. It was so disturbing to watch this go on and on.
Once I took my baby out, I noticed a huge difference from the first day! It made me so happy. My baby was happier, slept often, has interaction and is constantly being moved around and stimulated all day!
The ladies in the infant room will once in awhile send you home with pics of your baby doing something cute but don’t let that fool you. They will take a cute pic and then put them back down on the side and not pay any attention to them the rest of the time. I’ve seen it on the cameras. They take sick babies so my baby was sick just about every other week. You will not see that at a good home daycare. They will not accept sick babies.
Recently I found out 2 other moms were trying to take their babies out due to how bad it is. Please take your baby and your money elsewhere for better care. You will be thankful you did.

My wife and I have both our girls enrolled at Discovery Isle. All of the teachers and the staff are excellent. Cheryl Bowman, the Principal, has assembled a great team. Our girls have been in the infant room, toddler room, and now 2 – 3 year old room. We are very pleased with the progress they have been making. Our 2 year old reads stories, does arts and crafts, plays with the other kids, and gets lots of time to run around outside. She loves her teachers, Ms. Crystal and Ms. Candace. Our youngest is just 7 months old and in the infant room. Her teachers are Ms. Monique and Ms. Debbie… she adores Ms. Debbie.
If you are in the area and this school location is convenient for you, I’d say you can’t go wrong with giving Discovery Isle a call and checking them out.

Ms. Shelly’s kindergarten class at Discovery Isle surpassed our expectations and provided our son with exceptional academic and social skills for success in the first grade. Ms. Shelly is a truly gifted teacher with a passion for early education. She makes the curriculum fun which keeps young students engaged, yet her class in structured in a way which instills discipline and work ethic.

Kindergarten at Discovery Isle differs from public school in that in addition to outstanding instruction for reading and arithmetic, there is also huge emphasis on art, music and physical education. By the end of the year, our son recognizes and identifies different categories of art as well as specific artists like Van Gough and Georgia O’Keefe. The kindergarten has music class once a week, and the children perform in three musicals during the year.
There are small class sizes and an open door policy, both which cultivate a wonderful sense of community at Discovery Isle. Some of our favorite memories are from Ms. Shelly’s Friday morning pancake breakfasts, which the children look forward to all week and parents and other teachers often stay for.
Most significantly, Ms. Shelly and Discovery Isle have instilled in our son a love of learning and enthusiasm for school. We wholeheartedly recommend Ms. Shelly’s kindergarten class and consider it a wonderful investment in our son’s education and future.

My daughter attended here from early 2010 through late 2013. She is now performing very well in kindergarten at public school. She is exceling at math, reading, writing, etc. and I attribute much of that to her experience gained at this school. She loved the school and the teachers and still talks about them.
My 18 month old son has also been attending here since he was 8 weeks old and loves it there. I am really proud of the school for the support they give him and the other toddlers as they explore different ways of expressing themselves through their actions. They never give up on a child! They work hard to provide love and care for them all. They practice safe and sound corrective actions when the children act out by redirecting the child and encouraging appropriate behavior vs. «punishment» which is nonproductive.
Regarding the review comments about turnover in previous years, my daughter was there during that time. Some of the turnover was related to the teachers who were married to military men and were relocated. This is normal when you live close to a large military base. Also, I did research this because I too was concerned but I found that it is VERY common for daycares across the country to have large turnover since the pay is generally low and teachers use this employment as a stepping stone to higher paying jobs or they work at these places while they attend school for higher degrees. The replacement teachers were all very good as well so it made the transition smooth. Additionally there are many teachers who have been there for a long time which does offer stability.
I found this school through a recommendation of someone whose multiple children attended and had gone on to excel in public school as well. So I would also like to recommend this school to others. They have always been very responsive to any questions or concerns that I may have.

I am really disturbed, as is my child, by our experience at this school. The bottom line for me is that they do not seem to love the children. So they don’t really care if they’re having fun, if they’re treating others with respect, if they are hurting others or being fair, or if they feel safe, and they do not appreciate the kids as individuals. Furthermore, when confronted with any issue they (specifically administrators) become immediately defensive and are unwilling to support kids or make any adjustments. The teachers seem good and experienced, but I feel they and are overworked and do not have a low enough ratio to kids to really support child development, and they lack warmth.
The school gives parents a report card that has like a million goals on it, but really demonstrates that they are doing nothing important. They are all academic goals, but when it comes to developing a love of learning or making friends or being kind, well that’s just not a goal I guess.
To get more specific, my 4 year old cried nearly everyday while here. I watched him go from such a happy kid that loves school to an angry child that hated it. I kept thinking it was the transition or just a phase or his fault and not the school’s and it would get better, but leaving him there for 6 months was the worst parenting decision I’ve ever made. Once he moved to a new school it got better immediately.
The day I pulled him out suddenly I had decided to call and talk to his teacher. He had been complaining nearly every day for at least a month that kids were hurting him. The teacher leaves before I get off work, so I couldn’t easily discuss this with her. I wasn’t mad, I figured there’s a lot of little kids, these things happen, maybe my son is provoking it somehow, I should get to the bottom of this so we can make it better. The director answers the phone and asks why I’m calling, and in a very matter-​of-​fact non accusatory way I let her know I want to talk to the teacher because my son keeps telling me stories about being hurt and he doesn’t want to come to school. She tells me «thats not true, he probably just says that to get a reaction out of you. And your son is a terror. He terrorizes other kids all the time.» Speechless. Thinking a) that’s a weird, deflecting way to respond to my issue, 2) if my sons is a terror, why has no one ever mentioned this to me before in the 6 months I’ve been coming here daily??? 3) I can’t believe an administrator thinks this about my child and thinks that it’s appropriate to call children terrible names when speaking to parents. &4) how does she know what my son said isn’t true? I completely believe him. So I ask. «I was not aware of that… What does he do?» And she tells me that the other day a classmate was coloring and he laid on her paper. Um, okay, that’s not polite, but a TERROR? That was her explanation. And how does this address the issue of other kids hitting him on a daily basis and hating school? I got him outta there.

I am not a parent, rather a teacher at Discovery Isle in Carlsbad. It was so disheartening to read some of the comments in previous years of dissatisfied parents as we currently have so many parents who commend us on our talents and passions as teachers. I have been working at this location long enough to know there have been such positive changes that have take place in the course of the past year. As a person in graduate school for education, I can honestly say that this program is far above any expectations I had when coming aboard. The staff are friendly, welcoming, and passionate about what they do. There is such a nice combination of learning and socialization that take place throughout the day. I can whole-​heatedly say that this program has taught me so much and I continue to grow as a teacher everyday because of it. I know if you come in to check us out you won’t be disappointed!

I do not want to name names or give out my child’s personal info, so this review may lack specifics. But I feel the need to share my review with other parents as I do not wish another child to have a negative experience at this facility. When a child is this young (2 – 4), a few months of negative school experience can result in damage that is hard to reverse. If you have a perfectly well behave kid, this place is OK. If your kid requires more attention or coaching effort than average, this school does not have the ability or willingness to work with the kid. I do not mean special needs, just the normal «not all kids can sit still» thing. I dis-​enrolled my child after a few months and found a different school/​daycare. The new place has no issue working with my child. My child has been doing fine at the new school and the teachers have no problem with my kid.

My kids have been going here for 4 ½ months & they really like it. They just turned 5 & attend pre-​k. It is a much more enriching & structured learning environment than where they were prior. My son has become much more interested in learning, both are are in the beginning stages of reading, & writing words. There have been a few things that didn’t exactly go the way I would have liked– but overall my kids are happy, in a safe environment & they are learning.