Kiddie Academy is truly a trustworthy and phenomenal place to receive childcare. The Staff is…read moreamazing and works hard to provide care and support for every child there. Lauren is an amazing owner and ensures every employee has an abundance of support and resources to carry out their responsibilities. Kiddie Academy of Albany is one of the best work environments I have been a part of and it would be a great experience for anyone who loves working with children.

We had to scramble when the daycare we had been on a waitlist for a year for told us it would still…read morebe longer and we toured several places and Kiddie Academy was a no-brainer - SO much nicer than any other places we looked at. We were lucky that they happened to have an immediate space for our infant and the only reason we withdrew her was when her slot on the waitlist at our employer's day care finally opened up. The staff is the perfect combination of professional and affectionate with the children and the facility is clean and modern with lots of developmentally appropriate toys. The teachers really work hard to do more than just watch the children - they are conducting daily developmental play even with the small infants. The app was such a blessing for us anxious new parents - getting photos and updates throughout the day eased us tremendously. It's a little pricey, but I can honestly say it was worth every penny.

The faculty and staff here are fantastic. They love what they do, and it shows. My son comes home…read moreeach day excited to tell me about what he learned.

From the owner: We provide Montessori education for children ages 6 weeks through 6 years…read more Little Ones provides thoughtfully prepared environments designed to support the development of empowerment and independence. Carefully guided as appropriate by their teacher, students choose their own works based on their curiosity, imagination, and level of intellect. As a result, students become active, self-directed learners, independent thinkers, and self-confident decision-makers.

I had my daughter enrolled in this center for two months. This place is very overpriced for what…read morethey actually offer. They do not provide any food. I would send her with breast milk, and they would put it in a bottle and not mark whether or not she drank from the bottle, so I would have to throw out the milk. She was out many times due to fevers and positive COVID cases in the classroom, and they would still charge us for those days. She had an incident that has left her with a lifelong scar. She fell and hit her face on the edge of the table and cut her eyebrows. Due to the placement of the injury, her hair will not grow back there. This frustrated me tremendously because, although I understand things happen, in a classroom filled with babies, you would think things would be childproof, but apparently not. When I reached out to corporate, all they said was that the tables are safe, despite my child's incident. The assistant director did not care whatsoever about what happened and showed zero concern for my daughter. They contacted us and stated it was a minor injury. As soon as I saw the pictures, I just cried. We removed her from the center immediately. Since these events occurred on the 1st of December and we had just paid for that month, they refused to give us a refund. After numerous calls to corporate, they refunded me the money; however, they never mentioned making any changes to protect the children.

Amazing place! Incredible staff, beautiful building, very educational. They even have an app for…read morequick and easy communication and teachers send daily photos of the kids engaging in activities! Easy to access as it's right off the exit.

Mega points for being reasonably priced for a couple and having three pools: one indoor and two…read moreoutdoor (one of the outdoor pools is for the kiddos). The indoor pool is on the small side, but it's also (as far as I know) the only indoor pool that doesn't require an apartment lease or hotel room booking within the city of Albany, which makes it the biggest indoor pool in town. The gym facilities also look pretty extensive, but I haven't actually come for the gym yet -- I'm in it for the swimming. The staff I've interacted with have been universally nice and helpful. My biggest complaint would be that the indoor pool closes so early, I assume for staffing reasons. Also, keep in mind that they require you to reserve your lane ahead of time for the indoor pool. I like the policy, since it saves you from going to the gym, getting changed and showering only to realize that there are no free lanes, but if you like to be more spontaneous about your workouts the JCC pool might not be for you.

Hello Albany JCC, it's nice to meet you…read more My kid is taking swimming lessons at the pool here. What is nice is that they let you try this out for one session without becoming members. There are a heck of a lot of services and activities associated with the JCC. The largest would seem to be the nursery school, the gym and the pool. If you had a nursery school aged kid, and enjoyed to lift weights and swim for some good low impact cardio, you would probably never leave this place. But that's just not me.

I debated quite a long time about whether I should write a review about our experience at Woodland…read moreHill (WH). After talking to so many other parents that experienced and are experiencing similar issues as we did. I would feel remiss to not help another family trying to make a difficult decision to either put in or remove their child from WH. WH has a beautiful property and facade, there are some good people that work there. However, that is where my praise for WH stops. There are a few main issues that I and others have had with WH that I feel should be shared. They do not give you a good idea where your child is academically. There are very few points of contact from the teachers. They send home 2 very vague progress reports a year with "WH language" by which I mean they tend to use words that are very neutral or ambiguous. The 2 parent teacher conferences throughout the year are very short, and there is little time to discuss. When I was able to meet with the teacher, they would revert to a thing my child said which seemed to divert any attention from the teacher. Every meeting we had they said the same thing, anything else they said was generic and neutral. Multiple parents that I have spoken with that left the school were astonished about how far their child was behind. They were embarrassed to not have noticed it and had to hire tutors. More importantly. There is a MAJOR BULLYING PROBLEM. The concerns that I had brought up to the teachers were actually about bullying and not academics. Again, these concerns were brushed off with generic language like talking to a politician. We were assured that a specialist was going through every class, and urged to wait for that to happen. It was months before that specialist got to our classroom, and nothing changed. Several parents have contacted us with the same issue, asking to get together so that our children can play so they can feel better after being bullied all day in school. For two years my child told me when he walked into the school that he felt "empty inside". They would come home and tell us that it was the worst year of their life. They saw a child from WH and literally ran and hid because of how they had been treated. You can see the school trying to bring in faculty to address this problem. Ironically from my experience, the faculty that were tasked with this were the same faculty that clearly had no experience in child education and were the very faculty that made my child afraid and uncomfortable to walk into the school daily. There is a yearly fundraiser for WH where they hire a professional auctioneer. There are people that pay $30,000 for a reserved parking spot, that you will never see a car in. Do you really think they would tell the parent of that child that they were bullying other children or do anything about it? What some other parents said to me rang so true. WH is more like a daycare than a school. Sure, some children will thrive in this environment, and WH will be sure to prop them up on a pedestal when contested. If for any reason you are trying to decide if you should make a financial sacrifice to give your children, then I urge you to not make this choice. WH will make you feel like you can't get an education anywhere else, and if your child leaves you are doing them a huge disservice. It is a multi-level marketing \ cult mentality. Once you see through it is nothing but BS. If this review sounds jaded. It is. The experiences I was promised from WH were all false. They claim that the older children will build the younger children up, bring up their confidence, and foster a love of learning. In reality, mine's confidence and spirit was crushed. My child was frozen with panic, forced to skip recess and lunch. These false promises go right down the extra curriculars. You sign up for a cooking class and make brownie mix from a box. Leaving the school was the best decision we ever made for our child, and they are finally healing from the years of turmoil by attending there.

I'm grateful every day that we found WHMS! Where do I start?…read more This school encompasses everything that is good about Montessori school---they teach kindness and self-sufficiency and self-directed learning. My daughter learns so much there every day. Her teacher, Nancy, is the embodiment of calm and awesomeness--she's like a Zen master! We visited another school and my three year old daughter cried through the entire visit. When we visited Woodland Hill, she was calm and happy and said, "Mom, I really want to go to school there." I love their values around sustainability, peace, and treating others with respect. The school itself is exceedingly well-run, organized, and structured (in a good way). I feel that it is the best of all worlds, and the tuition is beyond reasonable for what they offer. There's a great community of families; I haven't met one single person I don't like, and people really work together. It's fun getting to being a part of this.

My two girls have both gone here and it's been an amazing experience with both. The community is so…read moresupportive and they each learned and grew so much. It was important to me that they were in a Montessori classroom and that they were able to start learning a second language while they were really young. This was the only school I could find that provided both of these things. I'm so grateful it also had such great teachers and such a supportive community.

This school is an amazing magical place where children are immersed in the outdoors and even when…read morethey are indoors they are engaged in amazing play-based learning. The teachers, staff and atmosphere are exactly what children need to learn and grown and develop. Both of my kids love their time there.

My daughter was here from 5 months until 21 months when we moved out of town. The teachers are…read morecaring and aware, the director of infant/toddler is phenomenally involved, and I don't have a bad thing to say. Great staff, big rooms with natural light, a playground (multiple) out back, CONCOURSE ACCESS for indoor walks and travel to the NYS museum (not like there's ever a need for an indoor walk in Albany), outside twice a day as toddlers, outside every day as babies, they use the parks near them and enjoy picnics in Washington Park or the sprinklers in Lincoln Park....I always felt safe and comfortable with her at CP, and when I picked her up she would often be very busy playing, even at the end of the day. No teachers on phones taking pictures of kids to text to parents. No screens, no swings, no bouncers. They have their methods and they involve really respecting the kids.