choosing a daycare center

i need some help deciding where my DS is going to go to daycare.

can someone help me?

1. did you ladies choose a place close to home or close to work? how did you decide?

2. if i have no recommendations from friends/family, how did you chose your daycare center?

3. what is the going rate for an 8 month old?

4. those that have the webcams in their daycare, can you tell me where your DC goes?

thanks everyone!

Re: choosing a daycare center

I chose a daycare that was close to my house, rather than close to my job. I figured if I was ever sick, or something, that I could still send DD to daycare. It was also more convienent for me to have her closer to home just in case my DH or my inlaws (who live 5 minutes from me) needed to pick DD up.

I started my search by looking on the State website:

http://it.ocfs.ny.gov/ccfs_facilitysearch/

I called all of the daycare centers that I was interested in and scheduled times that I could go visit them.

At my daycare, it is about $325 a week for an infant, and little bit more for a toddler, and a little bit less for a pre-k-er.

We don't have webcams in our daycare, so I am no help there!

Good luck!

Re: choosing a daycare center

1. did you ladies choose a place close to home or close to work?
I picked close to my office. It's 5 mins from me so I can go and visit if needed or Gd forbid I forget something or he's sick I can run over.
I also interviewed about 8 places in the area

2. if i have no recommendations from friends/family, how did you chose your daycare center? - visited 8 places, asked a ton of questions, spoke with the teachers and went on line to do searches. Also, got a recommendation from a friend at the office. Her little cousin goes to this school.
When you find a few look them up on this http://it.ocfs.ny.gov/ccfs_facilitysearch//Default.aspx

3. what is the going rate for an 8 month old?
Depends... we pay around $304/week for our almost 7 month old. There's no part-time for the infant room b/c babies can't share cribs.

4. those that have the webcams in their daycare, can you tell me where your DC goes? - my daycare does not. There is a camera that the Director and owner have and if I ever need to see something that I felt was wrong they can show you the tape from the day. Thank goodness I never had to.

Just to add... I worked at a daycare for a few years in college so I knew what I was looking for.

Re: choosing a daycare center

1. did you ladies choose a place close to home or close to work? how did you decide?

We looked at 6 different places, 2 we really liked. In the end we chose the one that was closest to our home. I work in the city, DH in Queens & Brooklyn. So all the places we researched were close to home, not work.

2. if i have no recommendations from friends/family, how did you chose your daycare center?

We have no friends or relatives that use daycare. We went on instinct. After seeing a few places, you just know what/who you are comfortable with and not comfortable with. It is funny b/c the one place that acquaintances kept reccomending (so and so works there, so and so sends their kid there, etc.) we hated!

3. what is the going rate for an 8 month old?

At DD's daycare, infant room is $1200/month

4. those that have the webcams in their daycare, can you tell me where your DC goes?

no webcam at DD's center.

Good luck-it was SO hard for me and DH to go through this process but 1 year later we are very happy with our decision

Re: choosing a daycare center