WHITEHALL — Celebrating its 55th anniversary this year, the Buttons and Bows preschool, located at the White Lake Congregational United Church of Christ building on Mears Avenue in Whitehall, is one of only two half-day preschool programs in the White Lake area, according to one of its teachers, Sherri Mikkelson. (The other such school is Good Shepherd, which is located at St. James Lutheran Church in Montague.)
The half-day designation is one Mikkelson and fellow teacher Kim Dubois think is important, as it provides more flexibility for area parents who don’t need a full day care-style preschool for their young children but still want them to be exposed to the school atmosphere prior to attending kindergarten.
“We have a pretty good relationship with some of the Shoreline (Elementary) teachers and some people from Montague, and we’ve heard a lot from them that our kids are very ready to start kindergarten,” Mikkelson said. “(They tell us), ‘We love getting Buttons and Bows kids in our classes because they know how to follow routines and they know how to follow directions.’”
The Buttons and Bows schedule is similar each day - individual time, group time, choice time and clean-up, with an outdoor recess most days - but it is fast-moving, which keeps things fresh and prevents repetitiveness for either student or teacher. It helps that there are two different groups; a tuition-funded preschool group of three- and four-year-olds attends in the morning, followed by a state-funded Great Start Readiness Program group in the afternoon. Eleven students are enrolled in the latter program, with 23 total in the morning, though due to staggered attendance schedules - preschool kids attend up to three days of the four-day week depending on age - it’s usually around 12 students per day. The different schedule keeps things fresh.
“Every day, halfway through the day, we get all new kids in and it’s all that new excitement,” Mikkelson said. “I really think that is a unique feature that we offer that (most) other schools around don’t.”
Both teachers often see the students adjust rapidly to the schedule, and it’s never clearer than when a student from the three-year-old class returns the next year as a four-year-old.
“They’re comfortable coming in,” Dubois said. “There’s a difference between even a three- and a four-year-old...We have kids that are starting to write. It might just be mock letters, but they’re learning that it’s a letter and it’s not a number. They’re learning a number is a value of how much, (not) a word. They’re just getting all that in their little memory bank so that when they go to kindergarten, (they think), ‘I already remember that,’ or, ‘I can write my name already.’”
Buttons and Bows, which rents its space from the White Lake UCC and is not directly affiliated with it, didn’t start out as a preschool. Mikkelson said it was started in 1969 by the late Elaine Warner with the intent of being a church-themed day care center. It largely remained that way until Warner left in 1988. Somewhere between then and when Mikkelson and Dubois took over the classroom in 2008 - attempts to find out exactly when or how have been fruitless, they chuckled - the program morphed into a targeted preschool.
Mikkelson and Dubois became the Buttons and Bows teachers one month apart. Mikkelson, whose youngest child had just started all-day school and had spent the previous eight years as a Buttons and Bows board member - most of the board is made up of current students’ parents - happily took over for a previous teacher who was leaving, armed with a social work degree and prior experience working with young kids. Dubois was recommended for the job by Liz Garman, whom she knew a little from their children being in school together. Garman herself taught at Buttons and Bows but moved on to be a Baker College instructor, teaching future teachers. Dubois always intended to be a teacher growing up, obtaining a teaching degree from Central Michigan University, but was a stay-at-home parent for a while until teaching at Whitehall District Schools.
The two have been joined at the hip professionally ever since and are now close friends as well. They enjoy getting to know the families whose kids attend the school as well as the kids themselves. Some family relationships can last close to a decade if, like Mikkelson, parents have several kids who come through the program.
“We both have four kids,” Dubois said. “(Sherri) is a first-time grandma, and I have nine grandkids. You treat these kids like you want your kids, or your grandkids, to be treated. I think that is definitely a plus. I hope that’s why we’re still around, is that we care about them, not just academically, but also their social and mental (development).”
The duo works with the Muskegon Intermediate School District to develop a curriculum for its GSRP class, which prepares students for kindergarten - a different beast now, Dubois said, than it once was.
“I think even now, parents don’t realize what kindergarten actually is,” Dubois said. “It’s all day, obviously, but they come in and they’re tested. ‘What letters, do you know? What numbers do you know? How far can you count?’ (At their age), you didn’t do that, or you did that maybe at the end (of the year).”
In the time Mikkelson and Dubois have run the classroom, they said, they’ve never had concerns a class wouldn’t be big enough, though in recent years a smaller population of kids in general has led to a slight numbers dip throughout the county. The two said the only time they were ever concerned a shortage might occur was in the fall of 2020 as schools returned to in-person instruction amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but instead they had an even larger group of students than normal, even briefly hiring a third person to help keep the classroom running smoothly.
The hope is that Buttons and Bows will continue for years to come. It will always be half-day - Mikkelson said there would be all sorts of regulatory hurdles to going to full-day - and kids will keep learning as long as the school is there.
“I think it’s pretty exciting that we’re still here,” Dubois said. “It’s not easy being in a business, however you want to call it, but just being a part of the community (for this long). Word of mouth is the big way we get many children. People know the name and they know the quality and they know the care.”
