Boulder Bilingual Childcare, INC.

TL;DR: Our family's experience with Boulder Bilingual has been incredibly positive, exceeding our expectations in providing a nurturing, family-run environment with a strong emphasis on bilingual education and wholesome, homemade meals. My children have thrived, gaining not only language skills but also feeling loved and valued. The staff's attentiveness helped identify and address my son's speech delay early on. Boulder Bilingual offers a unique, caring, and culturally rich childcare option that has become a cherished part of our family's life. ———————————— My husband and I have two children: a 5-year-old and a 2-year old. The 5-year-old has attended Boulder Bilingual for 3.5 years now, and my 2-year-old has been there for over a year. In sending my children to Boulder Bilingual, I have – to my delight and surprise – enlisted the help of much-needed partners in parenting. Boulder Bilingual is a true family-run business: Paty Rayo is the owner, and her two sisters and her mother all are the head teachers in classrooms. There are other teachers there, too, and all of them match the warmth and charisma of the Rayo women. In the meantime, Adiact, Paty’s brother-in-law, acts as administrator and ensures that everything runs smoothly. The premises features a unique building that was once a Lamborghini dealership. It’s gated and features two large playgrounds and four roomy classrooms. Paty’s friendly pup, Kalani, can often be found roaming the playgrounds, much to the children’s delight. To be honest, we weren’t specifically searching for bilingual childcare. My husband immigrated here from Peru, so the Spanish is a perk, but it’s far from the main reason we take our kids here every day. In fact, a lot of the kids who attend have no affiliation with the Latino world. Parents of all backgrounds love it, though, because at Boulder Bilingual, every child is treated like a valued family member. There are copious hugs, sweet nicknames, and lots of playing. Furthermore, Paty cooks the food herself every single day from scratch to ensure that children are well-nourished. And when I say from scratch – I mean, truly, from scratch. She refuses to use canned beans, for example, and snubs her nose at a more cost-effective model of “cold lunch”. She’s a magician at getting little ones to eat foods like kale or collard greens (which she minces and incorporates into gallo pinto, a Nicaraguan rice and beans dish that all the kids love). It’s a well-known refrain among Boulder Bilingual parents that kids eat all sorts of healthy things at the school that they won’t even consider touching at home. In addition to the teachers showing affection to all of the kids, they are qualified and thoughtful about the children. When my son was 3.5 years old, his teacher – Coqui, Paty’s mother – told us in a parent-teacher conference that she suspected he was speech delayed. She and Adiact recommended that we seek out speech therapy for him, which we did. The teachers at Boulder Bilingual then worked with us in order to help my son reach his speech goals, being mindful of the things he was learning in speech therapy. Thanks to Coqui’s observation, my child is where he is supposed to be developmentally. I will be forever grateful to her for catching that because, as first time parents, we didn’t suspect that anything was wrong. Both of my children have an impressive knowledge of Spanish because they attend school here. They have learned the Spanish songs and nursery rhymes that my husband grew up with, which has introduced a balance between my kids’ midwestern US roots and their Peruvian roots. More than being pleased about that, though, we’re thrilled that our children feel loved and valued every single day. We often send my daughter to school with unkempt bedhead, and she comes home glowing in pigtails. She practically vibrates with joy because of that pampering. My son has always thrived there, as every teacher he has had goes the extra mile to show him love and respect. In short, I wholeheartedly recommend Boulder Bilingual.