Love’s Learning Loft is blooming and come May, the Mentor-based childcare center will be planting new seeds in Chester Township.
Love’s Learning Loft is blooming and come May, the Mentor-based childcare center will be planting new seeds in Chester Township.
“I love kids and I’ve always wanted to work with them. Making a difference in their lives is important and this is the best age to do it,” said Anna Love, owner of LLL, which has a new branch currently under construction at 7976 Mayfield Road, with an opening date planned for next month.
Love, who spent most of her childhood traveling, relocated to Ohio as a teenager as a part of her father’s work. After graduating from South High School in Willoughby, she remained in the state, eventually getting married and starting a family.
She began taking care of children while pregnant with her first son in 1994 and has been in the childcare business for close to 29 years.
Love was pulled to expand her business into Chester due to the limited number of childcare centers available in the area.
“There’s not many centers out here,” Love said. “We’d like to open one more at some point, towards Willoughby, Willowick, that area.”
Love’s Learning Loft offers programs for children ages 6 weeks through 12 years old, and bases its programs around the Creative Curriculum, an early childhood curriculum that focuses on “… project-based investigations as a means for children to apply skills and addresses four areas of development: social/emotional, physical, cognitive, and language,” according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Love’s programs are very individualized and will be tailored to the student, she said.
“It’s involving play and learning in a fun environment, and we are able to specify specific needs that each child might have,” she said. “One might be better at one thing and the other one might need a lot more help and we try to accommodate to make sure that each child learns in their way.”
Activities will be based on attention span and each age group’s ability to learn, she said.
“Pre-school, they’re learning how to write their names, they’re cutting paper with scissors, they’re getting ready to go into the pre-K program, which gets them ready for school. Our infant room is all based on their developmental goals for each month,” Love said. “Their attention spans are a lot shorter, so we might do five or 10 minutes with an activity, versus pre-school that can focus on something for 20 minutes.”
The family atmosphere is what sets LLL apart from other childcare centers, Love said.
“We involve families with a lot of things that we do,” she said. “We had, for instance, a Christmas dinner at the old Patrician (Party Center), families were able to get tickets and we had Santa Clause come, and it was just a family event with staff and the families and all the kids.”
Parents who are interested in enrolling their children will have a chance to tour the facility and speak with the director and teachers before making their decision, Love said, adding the new location is hosting an open house from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 22.
While the exact price of tuition is not yet set, it is likely to be between $280-$300 per week for infants and $200-$230 for preschool-aged children, Love said.
The center will be open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, visit www.loveslearninglofts.com or follow them on Facebook.
