Kindergarten Schmetterling - Heiligenstädter Str. 28

The director at the school was very gracious in accepting our short-term enrollment for our two-and-a-half-year-old son, on very short notice, for a three-week enrollment. Our son is very much accustomed to constant outdoor (or indoor) stimuli involving plenty of physical activity. He is also at the tail end of his 'Terrible Twos' phase—so as you may imagine, he really needs such levels of activity to distract him from his own conflicted emotions. The reason we enrolled our son was that he said that he wanted to go to school, as his older sister was (in summer camp) while visiting Vienna. He was more restless hanging out with us—his parents—than he thought he may be at school, based on his experiences so far at an international school overseas. It turned out that he didn't adapt so well at Schmetterling: during the first few days, he was mostly fine, but after that he cried a lot and wanted to be back with his family. Normally, at his overseas school, he would have a small amount of separation anxiety when being dropped off—however, such anxiety would vanish after fifteen minutes or so, and he'd be fine for the rest of the day. Our son cried a lot while at Schmetterling, on and off, throughout the day, as reported by his teacher: he wanted to see his parents and sister and couldn't quite acclimate to the school environment. Toward the end of our three-week enrollment, the director would send us an email or call daily when our son would cry. It seemed as though these emails came as soon as he started crying, as he was never actually crying when we picked him up, including once when we arrived within less than thirty minutes. The director at one point asked my wife if our son is normally okay at his overseas school, and also seemed to pass minor judgement, saying something along the lines of, "this is too much for him". Quite to the contrary, this school was quite clearly too little for our son, who expects a lot more stimulation from a school environment. In simple terms, he was bored and restless, in ways that we can easily recognize; I strongly felt that this comment illustrated a disconnect that the director has with the needs of young children. Schmetterling, at least at the two-year-old level, seems mostly like a supervisory pool of kids knocking around with toys, as opposed to a sort of engaging day with activities, i.e., interesting and evolving things to do. From our perception, it seemed as though our son did the same things repeatedly, daily, and came home. At his overseas international school, he has been accustomed to art projects (with take-home products), music sessions, performing arts, etc.—even at two years old: individual activities are around five minutes long to match young attention spans. I should mention that our son's actual teacher was very good—she seemed to be trying her best within the framework that the school prescribes. She wanted to do her best to help him acclimate. Perhaps our son's issues were a product of some combination of the school's limited facilities and general ideas around the way such an age group should be managed. Schmetterling is good if you want—or if your child is accustomed to—supervision and not much else, at least in the two year old age group. It is also priced accordingly (surprisingly cheap, I suppose on the plus side). If you expect more, it may be best to look elsewhere.

Not professional at all.. Very poor quality

As one post said, they were fast to accept our child in this kindergarten. We recently moved to Austria, and we were not familiar with schooling system in here. Meaning, we are used to school year ending in June. When we went to sign the contract, we relied on the information and details on the contract given to us verbally by E.L., the manager, rather then sitting in there and reading the lengthy contract. Off course, big mistake on our end. One of the questions that we asked the manager was, when we can stop bringing our child in the summer, when the school year ends, she answered, it would be when you decide. However, she never mentioned, according to the contract we would be obligated to pay tuition fees for the summer months, July and August, even if we stop bringing our child to kindergarten at the end of the school year that officially ends first week in July. When we learned this and as we are not planing to spend summer in Vienna, we decided to address this issue to their director, but he was not willing to correct this. His answer was, “l can not loose that money”, even after we agreed to pay tuition fees for 2 months which our son didn’t attend due to the covid19. Another big issue is, the kindergarten appears to be as a transitional type of place. Many children are leaving after short period of time, which is very hard for our son. As soon as he would make friends with the children, they would be gone. In some instances our son was in the group with one or two children of his age, and rest of the children in the group were 2-4 years old. Our son just turned 6, and It didn’t take long before he started complaining that he is mostly bored in there. As a result of that, we also started having a hard time to convince him to go to the kindergarten. This was also addressed to their management, but once again, we didn’t run into much understanding on their end. Lack of everyday activities appears to be a problem in there as well. Due to the poor management at that facility, my son’s group was without pedagogy for 2 months prior to covid19, so the children were more left to play on their own rather then engaging some kind of activities. In our case that is an issue since our son is in his last year of kindergarten, where he should be learning more and getting ready for his first school year. Normally private kindergartens stand for higher standards, but that’s not the case with Schmetterling kindergarten. This kindergarten cares much more about the profit rather then achieving the results that we as parents expect them to achieve.

Great place! Our son loves to go there! Modern Kindergarten with great staff. Big PLUS (in my opinion) that they do have their own chef - fresh homemade food every day! So much better compared to all the other facilities in Vienna. Do also offer a lot of afternoon activities for older children (3+). Would definitely recommend this place!