How do you choose a nursery?

[Thistledew]

DS is 21 months and we are very fortunate that we are only just now having to look for professional childcare for him. He will only be going two days a week initially.

What were your criteria for choosing a nursery? We live in London so have a range of options near by. So far we have visited two, and I'm struggling to pick or discard either.

The first seemed to be physically smaller than the second so felt a little crowded.

The second building didn't seem quite as well maintained- could do with some repainting for example, and one of the rows of coat pegs was hanging on its screws a bit.

The second had large floor to ceiling windows so felt very light and airy.

The first one seemed to have a greater range of toys, but there were still plenty in the second.

Neither have a great deal of outdoors space, but they both spend the same amount of time outside. They both go to local parks.

The first seemed to offer more in terms of visits by external theatre and sports groups and has some limited access to a forest school for the pre-school room.

The first has a waiting list. The second does not.

I haven't yet examined the ofstead reports, but will check those out.

What were your criteria for making your choice?

Any advice in this? I would really appreciate some pointers.

Do not worry about anything other than the staff. A couple of loose screws are not really what you want to concentrate on. I picked my daughter's nursery on account of her cousin's nursery, and they both love it, but it's actually a quite good South Cheshire nursery. Wow, I'm babbling.

My only interest was looking at the staff and deciding whether I would trust them with my baby's life. May sound dramatic but that's the crux of it.

I picked ours because:

• I didnt have to make an appt to visit, I was allowed to just show up whenever and present at reception, they were not giving a preprepared tour

• Staff were all friendly and down to earth

• They were child led for eating, naps and activities

• Most important, the kids were smiling, chatting, engaged, they had access outside on demand, activities to do and just seemed really happy.

Thanks for all of the replies.

Did you speak to the actual staff who would be your DC's key worker? We were shown around both nurseries by a team leader and of course the actual key workers were busy with the children. I asked the team leaders some questions about how they would handle the trickier aspects of DS's behaviour and got good responses from both, but naturally I don't know how these will manifest in a nursery setting until he actually goes there.

We did make appointments for both places but as everywhere is oversubscribed here I imagine it is necessary else they would have a continuous stream of visitors to deal with.