Reviews?

[usatwinmama]

Anyone have any reviews or direct experience with these places? If you had to pick one of these ones, which would you choose and why?

• Millington Road Nursery School (CB3)
• Butterfly Day Nursery (CB4)
• Abacus (CB4)
• Under Fives Roundabout (CB4)
• ACE Nursery School (CB1)

We're in the USA so we can't just visit the schools so at some point we'll just have to take a leap of faith, assuming we'd be able to get in and not just on the wait list but that's a separate matter. For now, I'm just curious if anyone has any direct reviews of any of these nurseries which we think is close to where we'd be living...we're also making a bunch of assumptions here because nothing is final yet. We expect to be in Cambridge late summer/early fall 2013 hence the planning now for things like schools that might require a lot of advance notice.

We have boy/girl twins that will be 3 by the time they would start. And they would have been in a couple 2's classes here in the USA (one a cooperative using Creative Curriculum and another a Montessori parent/toddler class). They're pretty independent kids and active but not hyper (yet?). We would prefer a place that does not use timeout for discipline but instead more redirection/distraction/negotiation and also hopefully has more cooperative play. Our kids tend to play well with each other so we'd like to keep that going and have them at a place that will also allow that together time and also some individual time if they would rather do their own thing. We try to encourage independence and having them think on their own.

Do not know any of those but check out their ofstead reports.

I did already; they were mostly 2's and 3's. How reliable are the Ofstead reports? I'm thinking personal reviews in addition would be also helpful (hence my post), not just a standard report.

...meaning good/satisfactory. No complaints.

2 and 3 isn't great. My daughters nursery in Edinburgh got all 6's, however it is a private school. Have a look at some of the private school nurseries, you can always move them for p1. Also, in Scotland they get their pre school grant which takes a big chunk of the fees, you may get it where you are too.

I think we might be looking at two different things, since the Ofsted report has this scale, which doesn't go up to 6:

Grade 1: Outstanding
Grade 2: Good
Grade 3: Satisfactory
Grade 4: Inadequate

But some of the reports are from 2006-2009 so they don't seem like they are current though there aren't complaints. This is why I was thinking that trying to get personal reviews of anyone that has direct experience with these nurseries might be better.

We are open to other options too; the problem for us is that we don't know where we will be living in Cambridge in late summer/early fall 2013 so some won't even consider us because we don't have an address. We have boy/girl twins that will be 3 then. My husband is a professor and will be in Cambridge on sabbatical; details are getting worked out but I wanted to see what the preschool options would be because here sometimes the wait lists can be quite long, especially for the better schools.

We'll likely be around the downtown Cambridge area or we're assuming so far anyway. We were already told by one school that we can get the 3's early funding so that's really great. I think the twins will be well-prepared because we are paying for their 2's class here in the USA at two different schools for 3 mornings a week total so they'll be well-prepared for the classroom environment. I really would love for them to intermix with other kids, especially locals.

You should try posting this in the Mumsnet Local Cambridge section!