Case study · Foundations Early Learning Center

Foundations Early Learning Center

A bright, playful website design for Foundations Early Learning Center, a growing family of childcare schools, with a find-a-school locator, programs by age and a STEAM curriculum story.

Industry: Education & Learning
Services: Website Design, UX/UI Design
Year: 2026

Foundations programs grid with colour-coded cards from Infants to School Break Care on sunshine yellow, beside a phone showing the mobile homepage hero

Foundations Early Learning Center homepage hero with a laughing girl holding up paint-covered hands, the headline Where curiosity begins and confidence grows and a Find a School search bar, with the mobile version alongside

01 — Context

More than childcare

Foundations Early Learning Center runs licensed childcare and early education schools in South Carolina for children from six weeks to 12 years old: infants, toddlers, preschool, pre-K, before and after school care and summer camp. Every school follows a STEAM-infused, research-based curriculum, and new locations keep opening.

For parents, choosing childcare is one of the biggest decisions they'll make, usually on a phone, often in a hurry. They want to know three things fast: is there a school near me, is it right for my child's age, and can I trust it?

Foundations needed a website that answers all three, scales as new schools open, and feels as joyful as a good classroom.

The full Foundations homepage: hero with school search, three promises, programs by age, book a tour, What is STEAM, getting started steps, why families love Foundations, careers, testimonials with the alligator mascot and footer

02 — Design

Colour, curves and a little mischief

We built the look from the classroom up. A confident navy anchors the palette, with magenta, sunshine yellow and leaf green for energy. Soft clouds, leaves, rings and a paper rocket float in and out of sections, and colourful bars along the footer read like a row of building blocks. Headlines are set in a rounded, friendly sans that's easy to read at a glance.

Photography does the emotional work: real kids, mid-giggle, paint on their hands. And at the bottom of the homepage, a friendly alligator mascot pops up beside parent testimonials, a small surprise that makes the brand easy to remember.

It's playful on purpose, but never at the expense of clarity. The story still moves parents toward one action: book a tour.

Foundations programs grid with eight colour-coded cards from Infants and Toddlers to Summer Camp and School Break Care, each with a child photo and age range — Eight programs, each with its own colour and age range.

Find a school

The locator comes first

Search sits right in the homepage hero, and again in the footer. Enter a city, state or zip and the locator lists the nearest schools with distance, age range, enrolment status and hours, side by side with an interactive map. A radius setting and filters narrow the results, and Use My Location does it in one tap.

Each school also gets its own landing page, so local families find the right campus, the kind of structure that matters for multi-location SEO.

Find a School Near You page with a search bar, filters, a list of South Carolina schools with distances and hours, and a map with location pins — The school locator.

A parent's hand holding a phone at a kitchen table with toy blocks and crayon drawings, showing the Foundations mobile homepage — Built for the way parents actually search.

03 — Curriculum and programs

Making STEAM make sense

STEAM can sound like jargon to a tired parent, so the site explains it simply. The homepage introduces Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math as a swipeable set of colourful cards. The Our Curriculum page goes deeper: a balanced, whole-child approach, a research-based foundation built on The Creative Curriculum, meaningful STEAM learning, and early exposure to Spanish and sign language.

Program pages follow the same rhythm for every age, from infants to school-age kids, so parents always know where to look for age ranges, goals and milestones. For more education work, see Further Learning Group.

Two Foundations homepage sections: What is STEAM? with navy, magenta and yellow cards for Science, Technology and Engineering, and Why Families Love Foundations with four icons for communication, safety, flexible programs and modern environments — Interface details: STEAM cards and the four reasons families choose Foundations.

Mobile and personality

Small screen, big personality

Most parents will meet Foundations on a phone, so every section was designed for mobile too, with the school search kept high and the program cards stacked as big, tappable tiles. It's a good example of why mobile-first design isn't optional.