As career kindergarten teachers, it's been our experience that incoming 5-year-olds are lacking in preparatory academic fundamentals and social cues. Mrs. O's directors will prepare your 3, 4 & 5-year olds with foundational values and skills they'll use for life.
Our preschool will gently guide your child through structure and lessons built from core values and golden rules. With a curriculum play-based in theory, your child will make sense of the world around them as they are encouraged to develop social and cognitive skills, mature emotionally, and gain the self-confidence required for new experiences and environments.
Built around the core values of Determination, Courage, Respect, Confidence, Playfulness, and Community, our vision is to model and communicate these values while understanding each child's individual needs.
With over 60 collective years of early elementary teaching experience, our philosophy focuses on active involvement, meaningful experimentation, and reinforcement through repetition. Our passion for nurturing children shapes Mrs. O's Six Golden Rules.
Nancy Obidzinski-Lum is a proud graduate of Western Michigan University and has spent 42 years fulfilling her passion for teaching. Nancy's teaching experience has been at St. Joseph Elementary, Kalamazoo Public Schools and most recently 20 years at Moorsbridge Elementary in Portage. Teaching brings her so much joy. She can't imagine her life without teaching small children. Nancy and her husband, Eric, have three wonderful daughters, Meaghan, Katelyn, and Reilly. She is also “Buttah” to her grandsons, Sawyer and Beckham. Nancy is so happy to bring Mrs. O's Preschool to our wonderful city of Portage.
Since Katelyn Obidzinski Lum-Cortright was a young girl, her dream was to become a teacher. Katelyn's dream was fulfilled when she graduated from the School of Education at the University of Michigan and was hired as a 2nd-grade teacher in Portage Public Schools. Katelyn finished her 6th year of teaching in the Spring of 2018. She and her husband, Adam, have one son, Sawyer who is four years old and will attend kindergarten at Moorsbridge Elementary in fall 2023! They are expecting a baby girl due in June 2023. Katelyn is loving spending her days with the littles!
Meaghan Lum-Dontje received her BFA degree in Digital Cinema from DePaul University in Chicago. From there she continued her education at the University of Michigan where she received her Masters in Education. In 2011, Meaghan began her career at Moorsbridge Elementary teaching kindergarten where she shared a classroom with her mom, Nancy. It was a dream come true! She married her husband, Nick, in December of 2019 and they welcomed their first baby boy, Beckham Eric Michael in July 2021. She is thrilled to run this new preschool with her incredible family!