The Good Kind of Old-Fashioned
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: Weems Creek Nursery School
How Mary Ostrowski became the keeper of a half-century West Annapolis tradition — and learned to trust the quiet power of play.
A mother on a tour once told Mary Ostrowski she’d heard the school was “kind of old-fashioned” — and it didn’t quite sound like a compliment. Mary didn’t flinch. “The fact that we’re a bit old-fashioned is what makes us so special,” she says. She has good reason for the conviction. Weems Creek Nursery School has been part of the West Annapolis community since 1972, and as Mary puts it, “a small business doesn’t last that long unless it’s doing something right.”
Mary Ostrowski
Listening first
Mary is the owner of Weems Creek Nursery School, a play-based preschool in Annapolis. When she purchased the school in 2018, she didn’t arrive with a plan to reinvent it. She spent her first year doing the opposite — listening. She set out to understand the school’s history, its community, and the traditions that had served families well for decades, so she could preserve what already worked before changing a thing.
A door opens
Then came 2020. Like so many businesses, Weems Creek hit a wall when COVID arrived. But reopening that fall turned out to be the opening of a door. One of the stipulations around being allowed to reopen that fall was that no visitors were allowed inside the building and field trips were off the table. As a result, the school stripped back to its essentials: just the kids.
In the absence of all the extras that schools tend to pile on, Mary spent the year really starting to understand early childhood education, and in particular the nuances of play-based learning. She found the heart of what she had been entrusted with. This new perspective, plus the ability to learn from the expertise of her staff, reshaped how she talks about her work.
The biggest misconception she’d love to bust is that children need to be reading by kindergarten. If a child happens to be reading by the time they leave pre-K, wonderful — that’s clearly part of their developmental path, and it’s something to nurture, not a finish line every child must reach on the same schedule. She likes to recall Fred Rogers, who saw play not as something extra but as a child’s most important work. “My time with Weems Creek Nursery School has helped me understand how true that is,” she says.
“The fact that we’re a bit old-fashioned is what makes us so special.”
Why play is the real work
Mary will tell you that a child’s cognitive abilities can sit up to twelve months ahead of or behind their peers in these early years — and that this is perfectly normal. Push formal reading and writing too soon, she warns, and you risk widening that gap, planting an early seed of “less than” in children who are developing right on their own schedule. Play, by contrast, builds the things that last: curiosity, resilience, risk-taking, even conflict resolution. Those skills foster confidence, and confidence builds emotional safety. “When we feel safe,” she says, “then we can learn anything.”
“When we feel safe, then we can learn anything.”
Happy families, valued staff
Ask Mary what success looks like beyond the numbers and the answer is immediate: “Success very much looks like happy families.” She learned early that the path there runs through her teachers. When you care for your staff, they feel valued. Children pick up on the tiniest of emotions — when a teacher genuinely wants to be there, kids feel it, and they carry that feeling of love and being seen home to their parents. Everyone ends up feeling like they’re growing and like they belong.
Where the good ideas come from
That openness traces back to her father, who instilled a belief she still leans on: “I’m never stuck. When things need to change, I know I have the power to do so — even if it doesn’t always seem logical.” This belief has given Mary permission to follow the paths that interest her, whether a new idea for the school or a new country to explore. And the ideas themselves tend to arrive outdoors. Walking her neighborhood or hiking in the woods opens up a kind of quiet — not silent, but peaceful. “I tend to have really great ideas while I’m out walking.”
More than fifty years on, Weems Creek Nursery School is still doing something right.
Find Weems Creek Nursery School
Mary Ostrowski, Owner
238 Kirkley Road, Annapolis, MD 21401 • Monday–Friday, 8:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m.
