All My Children Day Care & Nursery Schools — Local services in New York

This review is specific for the UPK class 2017-18 (Ms. Sue) at All My Children Daycare (69th Ave - Forest Hills location). When we were listing choices in a UPK application for our 4-year old child, we gave All My Children a high priority based on the advertised child development programs and availability of onsite playground in the backyard. At that time we were able to find only a few controversial reviews on the daycare but hoped for the best. Unfortunately, the things went not as expected... First of all, there was no Management onsite. Their main office (which was managing a few other daycares) was located in Jamaica, NY and was not easy to reach. All applications, documents, checks, etc. should go through that office. That caused many inconveniences and miscommunication as they constantly couldn't find medical examination forms, refundable deposit checks, then withdrew money twice... The emails with important information were sent to some parents and not others. The whole management process was poorly organized. Secondly, there was no real communication between teachers and parents (except a single parent-teacher conference in fall). At the beginning of the program they emailed monthly "Newsletters" but that practice stopped in February. Also they requested 2 big notebooks (1 for communication with parents and 1 for school exercises). At the time of graduation the 1st one was returned empty and the 2nd one with only 3(!) pages used. Thirdly, the UPK curriculum was far below the expectations. No real difference with a regular daycare program. I believe all "education" was finished in March (4 months before graduation!) when management and teaches became focused on the summer camp. To prove that, they were constantly decreasing the number of remaining school days. Initially, parents were told that the last day of school would be during last week of June (after official end of school year - June 26th). In March that date was moved to Jun 21st. And then on June 1st they told parents that last day of school would be June 15th and only for children in "afterschool" it would be June 21st. Probably couldn't wait to say "good-bye". By the way, our expectations from their so-called "afterschool" fell short. In reality, after the end of the UPK program (2:20pm), the remaining UPK students would join the toddlers (even babies!) with couple teachers acting like babysitters. Those teachers changed frequently so we could see new faces pretty often. That was a possible reason why they didn't bring children outside in the afternoon, even during warm months. Instead, they were sitting in the classroom with freezing air conditioners on. It's also turned out that the backyard playground was infested with mosquitos so our child came home with multiple bites on her legs... The other interesting thing was their desire to keep the everyday pictures of children to themselves and not share them with parents (in contrast to other daycares). It was impossible to get the picture files to print for family album or even view them online. After the long conversation and a few reminders they gave us a dozen of the printed (on a plain paper) pics, that's it. As the "Jewish" daycare (as they called themselves), they could do much-much better. That was not definitely the time well spent. Conclusion:...

Our 3 year old has been attending the 3K program at AMC 69th Ave since Sept, 2021. My wife and I had a lot of concerns about how he would respond to Daycare and other people socially. Like most toddlers during Covid, he's had very little social interaction with anyone else other than family for the last 2 years.

There are two 3K classes at this location, one upstairs (Ms. Pam & Ms. Deena) and one downstairs (Ms. Kseniya & Ms. Hira) with usually ~7 to 9 kids per class. There are also other teachers and assistant teachers (Ms. Sandra, Ms. Melanie, & Ms. Sunny) working here along with the Site Director Ms. Christine. There's a good teacher to student ratio as well as cultural diversity with teachers, which is always a good thing in my opinion.

Our son is in Ms. Kseniya & Ms. Hira's class. He had a couple of issues in the beginning (bathroom & anxiety) but learned to overcome it. I attribute most (if not all) of it to Ms. Kseniya and Ms. Hira's caring and patient attitude towards our son. The staff here is friendly and professional every morning when we drop off our son. More importantly, I feel like EVERYONE genuinely loves working with kids. Our 3 year old looks forward to going to school every morning, I think that's a good indication that his teachers are doing a fine job.

Overall, we're very happy with the Daycare and would highly recommend AMC @69th Ave. The teachers make a huge difference and our son absolutely LOVES all his teachers at AMC. I don't agree with some of the reviews but everyone's entitled to their own opinions.

BTW, they serve breakfast and lunch and there's also a playground in the backyard for the kids to play. It's nice not having to worry about breakfast and lunch for your little...

I am utterly disgusted with the lack of professionalism and care that AMC has for their students and families. My son attended for over a year, (and mostly stayed for that year due to the convenience of location and cheaper priced tuition for our area) only to be told last minute that his program was not re-opening for a month and it MIGHT be open the following month. How was I informed of this? Through a group message between all the parents in his class who were just as confused as I was. No one had any answers. Half the parents got e-mails from the school and half did not. It took numerous e-mails, messages, and phone calls on my end to finally get the name and number of who to speak to in order to understand what exactly was happening. Carol Weber, someone who is apparently a director position, had no answers for why or when school was closing or re-opening. Her responses to my questions were vague and unhelpful. As a working parent who's child thrives on routine, this incredibly difficult situation negatively impacted my child as he was uprooted and forced into a new nursery school program. He was offered a spot in another AMC program however that one in Rego Park was just as disorganized and unkept as Forest Hills 2 locations. I am appalled at the way this situation was handled and would never ever recommend anyone to another AMC program again. Keep your children away from AMC! There is better quality education at places like Angels...