Now Grandmothers, Mother Goose Owners Started Center as Young Moms

Marge Glater and Sandie Kerns are two grandmothers who haven't slowed down. In fact, the pair, who own Mother Goose Children’s Center in South Windsor, recently celebrated 40 years in business. 

But Glater and Kerns weren’t grandmothers when they started the day care center – they were young mothers.

“We were two teachers and next door neighbors with daughters the same ages,” Glater recalled from her office recently. “We decided we didn’t want to go back to school.”

So they began their center with just 13 children at Our Savior Lutheran Church.

The center, now located at 1742 Ellington Road, has grown to serve about 175 children, with 49 employees and three buildings in the Colonial Cornere complex. It offers all-day kindergarten, before and afterschool care and child care from 6 weeks up, with programs accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

“It’s an amazing thing to have been in business 40 years but we don’t call it a business – it’s a family and these are our children,” Glater said.

“We never expected it to get so big,” Glater said. But when the center moved out of the church building, it began to grow.

To accommodate, the pair added staff along the way. And many of them stayed. The staff at Mother Goose have an average employment length of between 9 and 26 years, Glater said.

Sharon Satalino has been there more than 25 years and still said her work is fun.

"I enjoy working with the children and it's a nice place to work," she said.

A teacher named Jessica started at Mother Goose when she was 16. Twenty-three years later, she just watched her daughter leave the center for kindergarten. 

"It's fun and every day is different," she said. "It's like a big family here."

Many have college and advanced degrees but more than that, they have a heart for the children.

“Our teachers are wonderful people,” Glater said. And, coming upon an older woman in the infant room, said, “Anyone would want a grandmother like this taking care of their children.”

The pair’s philosophy comes back to their start as young mothers and nursery school teachers.

“We want the children at the center taken care of the way our children were taken care of,” Glater said. 

For more information, visit http://www.mothergoosecc.com.