Our daughter attended Burlington Daycare from infant to pre-k and it was the best choice we ever…read moremade. The entire staff is kind and caring. We always felt our daughter was safe there, even at the height of the pandemic. The Director Jacquie and the Assistant Director Renee are hands on and kept us informed and the everything running smooth. We know our daughter is smarter and more well rounded because she went there. She made friends that she will stay close with long after they went on to Kindergarten. We were so lucky to get our daughter in here, and we would highly recommend it!

I now have two children at BDC and still feel the same way. My kids love their teachers and receive…read morereally great care.

I can't say enough about the quality of the teachers, especially Miss Annie, who runs such a caring…read moreand professional school. we are a former school family, and we still join the school on outside activities like Apple picking, we were fortunate to have Miss Annie for the 3. years we did , my kids still talk about her to this day.

Our family has had a great experience at Waverley Square Daycare - Belmont. Ms. Annie and all the…read moreteachers have been so welcoming and our daughter is excited to walk in every day! We've been in both the toddler and preschool rooms and have enjoyed seeing the progression of activities and learning for the children. The Waverley team is very responsive and easy to communicate with, and even organizes fun family activities throughout the year where we can spend more time with the teachers and the other families. Would highly recommend to other parents looking to find the right spot for childcare!

My daughter completed the three-year primary program at Violeta. It was an outstanding experience…read morefor our family. Her first interaction with Violeta was a picnic for incoming families, followed by an individual home visit by her teachers before the first school year began. From day 1, the teachers and students are not strangers, thanks to the introductory events. Here's how Violeta continued to support my child's development: The mixed-age model was very effective at giving her practice leading and taking leadership from other children. In the first year, she mimicked the advanced children and took interest in more advanced tasks. By her third year, she was proud of receiving the more difficult presentations from the teachers (like division) and assisting younger classmates in learning skills she was already proficient with (like tracing, grading colors, and phonetics). I am thrilled to see my daughter, at age 6, already has teaching experience herself. Setting the table, using a napkin to wipe her mouth between messy bites, doing dishes, washing napkins, pouring her own glass of water from a pitcher, sewing with a needle and thread, tying her shoes, preparing a snack for herself and a friend, planting and harvesting from the garden, asking for help and helping others. Every day the teachers did this with the children, so my daughter's life skills are second nature now. The teachers are very thoughtful in how they design and prepare the environment to allow every student to practice at their own level before advancing to more challenging tasks and skills. Perhaps most importantly, Violeta has cultivated my daughter's motivation to learn, her skill to learn through observation and hands-on practice (standard in Montessori), and her ability to focus. At home, she self-initiates projects and remains on task without losing focus. She is attentive to her environment, thoughtful about what is around her, and happy to spend a day without screens. Violeta does not use screens. The school offers many ways for children to experience all their senses: smelling distinct scents in bottles, listening to world music with headphones, tending to living plants and animals, exploring the outdoors twice a day, and working with natural materials like arranging flowers for display. With bilingual instruction reinforced by proactive daily practice (e.g., Spanish mealtime conversations, workbooks, audiobooks, bedtime stories and more) beyond school hours, my daughter's language development has thrived. She has learned to do math, read, write, and build relationships with all ages in Spanish and English. For her, fluency has been a natural outcome of bilingual practice at home and at school.

My daughter is nearing the end of her 2nd year at Violeta. The current teachers are great at…read morelearning what each individual child needs. My daughter was very reserved and quiet when she began and has blossomed socially, now able to speak up and stand up for herself. The learning environment is beautiful and well maintained by the teachers. They encourage parent involvement and the kids are all a tight knit group. Highly recommend this school for anyone who wants to see their young child flourish!

I had a bad feeling about this place the second I walked in. I had to use the restroom and the…read moreadult restroom was dirty. Ever since I noticed that, during our tour, I also noticed the rooms that the kids were in were pretty dirty and messy. Grated, kids are messy, but this was a different dirty and messy, like they haven't washed the floor in a while dirty. The newborns were crawling around where there had been food dropped from lunch about 1/2 hour-1 hour prior, It made me really grossed out, plus what if the baby was allergic to whatever was on the ground?! The person we spoke to was nice, and sort of seemed to know her stuff, but gave us some misinformation (pricing info, staff info, etc.). The turnover is really high: 3 teachers leaving all together. That makes me nervous. I couldn't get out of there quick enough. The vibe was terrible. I didn't want to give it one star, but I the location is good for commuting parents.

I truly recommend this place. My two daughters ( 3 and 5 years old) attended for a week and they…read morehave a great time. The fascilities are big and super clean and the personnel very professional. Vanessa Freeman, the director knows exactly how to do her job. Very organized, problem solver, she would make your life easier. In comparison with other centers, for instance bright horizons in Allston and Kiddie academy ( very bad) this one was by far the best and there is a big gap. Thank you!

Both of my girls spent more than one year at the Inman square location. And they loved their…read moredaycare so much!!! We love it for the following reasons: 1. The caring staff! Kids are well-loved at their school. My kids are very close to their teachers and it has been an unforgettable experience. 2. Kids learned a lot. They learned so many songs at school and they enjoy singing and dancing very much. And my older one learned to read books and do some challenging math problems. We didn't teach her much at home and it is amazing for us to what much she learned at school. 3. The center is well organized. All inclusive programs, no need to bring lunch and diaper. That makes our life so much easier. Every month there are kids' performance show and other events. 4. The musical theme is great for kids. The musical director Phil is awesome! The downside: the center is relatively small. But it didn't bother me at all. I am just happy to see two little happy faces everyday. My older one will start kindergarten this September and we are also planing to transfer my younger one to a nearby center. I am sure that they will miss their old daycare a lot! There will be lots of tears at the moments of saying goodbye.

Our experience with Rock and Roll North Point infant room…read more TL;DR- A place for kids to have their basic needs met and for parents to get updates. Not a place for kids to learn and grow developmentally, or feel cared for by their teachers. Impossible to build trust with them. - Teachers don't have a genuine interest in the kids. They don't like kids. Felt transactional (will feed, will shake crib to help fall asleep, will change diaper, but not much more). - They let kids CIO (they will claim they don't, but they actively withhold soothing and attention until our kid is calmed. I get that they have other kids to tend to so it's not always possible to meet every kid's needs right away, but both teachers watched on as they let our kid cry continuously on the floor for 45 minutes. I took screenshots with timestamps to escalate to the executive team). - Not surprising to us, they had a DCF allegation (not from us) and closed down the classroom for 3 weeks. Same teachers returned to the classroom, nothing from the director what they'll do differently or any reassurance to rebuild trust. - If the teachers don't care about the kids, there needs to be more daily structured activities besides 15 mins of music, otherwise the teachers are on their phones, chatting with each other, skipping walks when they don't feel like going outside. - Both teachers had been there less than a year. Had more years of experience as a cashier, customer representative, or security guard than as early childhood educators (a career change must start somewhere, but see above comments on a lack of genuine interest, not a good combo). - Both admin and teachers lied to us (they'd tell us one thing, what we saw on camera was another. Had to take screenshots again to avoid they say vs. we say when we talked to them) - No windows at the kids' eye level in the classroom. Blinds are drawn even not during nap time (depressing atmosphere, especially given how much time they spend there). - Subjective, but I felt the teachers were kind of rough when picking up and putting a kid down, seems to think the kids are a nuisance. - Director has their kid hanging around at the daycare before and after the kid's school, which coincided with drop off and pick up at the daycare. The kid can be helpful, handing out toys to the infants (a liability in my opinion), but was disruptive when you're trying to have a conversation with the director and they repeatedly want attention from their parent. This review was based on 10 weeks of experience in the infant class. I understand there are short-term and temporary challenges with any daycare transition, but what we saw and what I noted here are long-term concerns that didn't going away even after our kid got well-adjusted. Many of these issues being fundamental to the approach of childcare (how do you teach someone to care and like kids?) On top of poor teacher quality, the admin failed to manage and train them.

Our oldest son just finished his first year of preschool in the 3-day program at Belmont Coop. We…read moreabsolutely love the school. The director and the teachers are so engaged with the kids and its an incredibly warm and welcoming community. We originally visited the school when it was located in Cushing Square. The space was fun and interactive but the new space has really allowed the school to grow in both capacity and programming. It's bright and sunny with plenty of room for more creative play and planned activities. It has an adjacent playground as well as a nearby park for more lengthy outdoor activities. The school provides several special activities which our son loves. Habitat, the Mass Audubon education center, regularly visits his class and provides hands-on exposure to the local fauna. They are also regularly visited by Hugh Hanley, a local musician who leads an hour of song and story telling. These are particularly fun days to be a parent helper in the classroom. Since this was our first foray into school for our son, we are very glad we chose a coop program. It allows us to see our son in his school environment and better understand his development and how we can help shape his growth both at school and home. We also get to know and work with other parents and families in the area. The teachers provide regular feedback which is encouraging and helpful. We particularly love the director who is constantly in the rooms with each group of kids and consistently checks in with us. I would highly recommend this school to anyone but would strongly urge families to look into the program sooner rather than later as the school regularly has a wait list.

I agree with the previous reviewer - the leadership and teaching staff at this school are amazing…read more My twin boys had a wonderful year in the 3-day class as their first out-of-home experience, and we all loved it. Everyone on the teaching staff is extremely committed, detail-oriented, and caring. They are working really hard to create a fun, engaging environment, and to make sure that every child is included and enjoying the experience. The classroom is organized thoughtfully, with an impressive range of activities always available to the children plus daily curriculum plans that include developmentally appropriate and seasonal enrichment activities, and also the year's enrichment activities from outside visitors included theater, music, yoga, and art. There is always so much going on at this school, and yet it manages to feel comfortable and homelike for the kids. We have also really appreciated the co-op aspect of it, since we recently moved to the area from out-of-state. The school has a wonderful mix of families and they have all been very welcoming. This school feels like a close-knit family with teaching geniuses at the helm. I love it, the kids love it, and I can't believe we were lucky enough to find it.

I am very impressed by the responsiveness of the staff at Artisan. The smaller class sizes really…read morehelp to provide one on one care for very young children

I don't doubt that some parents experience good things from Artisan. From what I hear their infant…read morecare is excellent and we loved the addition of music in the curriculum. But in speaking to other parents of kids my daughter's age, they were/are having similar issues with staff and management that we had before we left. I would recommend against transferring into Artisan at least after toddler stages. We immediately looked to Artisan for a preschool program because we had toured there when she was an infant and loved the presentation from that time. My daughter began her experience with daycare at a small in-home facility in Burlington and did very well there, but eventually grew out of that format and needed more structure with children her age. We didn't look anywhere else, and were excited to move her into a preschool classroom shortly after turning three last year (May 2018). Over the summer, we were presented with mixed reports of behavior issues (completely uncharacteristic of what we had seen to that point) and other reports of her doing well. We were not sure what the problem would be other than maybe a transitional issue. After a teacher change in the fall, we discussed the plan created with the previous teachers over the summer at the outset with the new staff. We began to notice however that they didn't seem to be following it. We again kept getting mixed reports from different teachers as to her progress. To be honest, her teachers' quality seemed to go down with the new staff. Also new was Director Julie, who eventually presented us with an ultimatum in November 2018 that we enroll her in public funded special needs evaluations or be removed from Artisan because they had no answers. This pressure was confusing and didn't sit well with us and we found their expertise to be lacking, so we didn't trust their insistence on there being a special need issue. I come from a family full of educators at all levels and their inability to creatively find and enact a plan didn't seem right with anyone. We pulled her from Artisan before Christmas 2018 and found a spot for her at Primrose in Burlington for even more money that Artisan was charging, but the cost difference was well worth it. Any behavioral issues were quickly dealt with and now, at 4.5 years old in a pre-k program she is excelling in all areas and working on first grade material. We're given glowing praise from her new teacher frequently. We purposely waited to see how she fared at her new school before posting any reviews, but her success only further shows me Artisan staff did not have the training or creative capacity to solve what amounted to be a simple problem. My wife and I experienced a lot of stress over her inconsistent care and Julie's ultimatum. Now we sleep very well knowing our daughter is in good hands at Primrose.

Above and beyond dedication to our child's health, safety and learning. The teachers are…read moreprofessional, classes are bilingual and even students who don't speak any Chinese at home learn to speak a second language. During the pandemic, Sunshine was quick to recognize the threat and react accordingly, but also quick to work with the state to reopen safely. I have heard from so many parents about their care center that took a huge cash deposit and suddenly closed for good with no refunds, or that operate extremely short hours each day. Sunshine's hours allow working parents to comfortably balance career and family. Our child loves to go to Sunshine, and is always bringing home something new that he learned. I can't say enough good things. Thank you, Sunshine!

We have been attending Sunshine for about 2 years now, and can't say enough nice things. Language…read moreexposure and a friendly, bright, happy play environment were my top needs for daycare/preschool. The administrators went above and beyond during the COVID shutdown with communication and flexibility. Their policies are all transparent and fair, and since my daughter has been back, she's regaining her Mandarin vocab and is healthy as a horse - hasn't had so much as a runny nose! We are planning to stay until she goes to elementary school and send our infant son when he gets a bit older.