God’s Garden Preschool & Child Development Center

God’s Garden Preschool & Child Development Center offers activities and events such as an Ice Cream Social, Meet-the-Teacher, First Day of School, Curriculum Night, a Fall Harvest Festival, Transportation Day, Summer Camp, a Kindergarten Info Session, and Trunk or Treat. The program includes play-based learning opportunities within a child-centered, discovery-based curriculum that utilizes the High/Scope educational approach, along with bi-monthly chapel services that integrate Bible stories, prayer, and worship sessions.

• Ages: 1–6 years old
• Schedule: Class sessions offered Monday–Friday between 7:30 am and 4:30 pm, with office hours on weekdays and extended care available before and after school
• Price: Transportation Day made nearly $7,000 for the school

God’s Garden Preschool & Child Development Center began when members of the Horizon worshipping community identified the need for an Ahwatukee preschool in 1999, and the program opened in the fall of 2000. The program is a ministry of Horizon Presbyterian Church and operates at the direction of the Session, or governing board, of the church. The mission statement is that God’s Garden Preschool partners with parents to grow the heart, mind, and spirit of the whole child in a Christ-centered environment.

The director, Michelle Rhodes, PhD, leads God’s Garden Preschool & Child Development Center, and the director has a Ph.D. in Early Childhood Education. Teachers are described as highly qualified, and staff members are selected for their educational background and experience in early childhood education, with ongoing staff development through university and college coursework, workshops, conferences, and in-service training. The program maintains low child-teacher ratios of 1:5 for toddlers and 1:8 for preschool and pre-K.

God’s Garden Preschool & Child Development Center emphasizes kindergarten readiness skills and the development of Christian values such as self-esteem, hope, faith, caring, sharing, forgiveness, honesty, obedience, responsibility, thankfulness, patience, love, joy, and fairness. The environment is described as loving and Christian, with the love of God as a central theme, and the school notes a warm, community feel, an open-door policy with volunteers always welcome, and a supportive and inclusive school environment.

Chapel is led by the director, pastor, teachers, and/or volunteers from Horizon Church, and themes from chapel are integrated into the classroom curriculum. Community involvement includes service projects such as Transportation Day, Food Drives, Love Up, and Winged Hope. Transportation Day is an annual event that draws between 2,000 to 4,000 children and their families to explore vehicles such as a helicopter, fire truck, police car, city bus, motorcycles, motor homes, and race cars.

Summer Camp is part of the program and is noted as filling quickly, with early registration recommended. Trunk or Treat is geared toward 2- to 6-year-olds and asks volunteers to limit the scariness of decorated trunks; each volunteer brings a decorated trunk or uses an assigned parking space, brings candy to hand out, and is assigned a spot in the courtyard or gravel lot in front of the church and school.

Parent testimonials describe teachers as phenomenal, caring, and highly educated, and mention thought and creativity in day-to-day activities. Parents also describe the program as warm and welcoming, with children enjoying learning through play and a faith-based curriculum, and one parent notes choosing the program because of the quality learning environment to help a child be prepared for kindergarten and describes the staff as providing a loving and nurturing experience.

Last updated January 10, 2026.