Nursery/childminder recommendation

[kelik]

Hi
I am new to Mumsnet. :) We are moving to St Albans in August (we will be living very central - AL1) after have spent a few years overseas. I don't know the area and am looking for a nursery school/childminder for my 9 month old and 2 and a half year old, three days a week while I am working from home in St Albans. I am hoping to visit St Albans in April to scope out some nurseries as I noticed that for a lot of places you have to put a hefty deposit down and I am not in a position to do that until I see a place. Any nursery or childminder recommendations would be really helpful to help me narrow down the search?
Cheers

I don't have a recommendation, but just wanted to recommend you join the St Albans NCT egroup - a Yahoo group - there are loads of discussions on there about local nurseries, and people often post asking about childminders. If you join the group you can search previous messages. You don't have to be a member of the NCT. It's a very busy group.

By the way, I would get going in earnest on the search and making up your mind as some of the more popular nurseries there have veeery long waiting lists (several months).

St Albans is a lovely town though and loads to do with young children. The NCT group is also good for recommendations about that sort of thing (and also www.toddlersdaysout.co.uk).

We lived in St Albans until last year when we wanted to upsize and were priced out of the local housing market!! But now only live 15 mins away so often visit.

Thanks Wigeon - that's great.