KIDSLAND BERKELEY

"Fell in love with Kidsland as soon as I walked in - clean, well-organized and welcoming. You can tell the staff there take good care of this space. My little one started going there at age of 8 months and didn't have a SINGLE day of struggle, every day her little arms approaching to Laura and Ana at arrival meant that I made a right choice. Cannot recommend it any more!"

"For the last 2.5 years, Kidsland has been wonderful to us, providing our family with excellent childcare services, great communication and advice, and a community of smart, active children with caring and thoughtful parents. Our daughter started attending Kidsland when she was 6 months old. She immediately took to Laura, so much so that we jokingly worried she loved her more than us. The Kidsland staff were extremely helpful, always maintaining communication and sending us photos throughout the day. For our daughter, whose mother and grandparents are from Mexico, speaking and understanding Spanish is vital, and we have been astonished by how much she has learned in the last few years. She is capable of communicating effectively with her Spanish-speaking Abuelita and her English-speaking Grandma. The educational environment at Kidsland is impressive. We are continually surprised at the knowledge our daughter brings home. Her recognition of letters and numbers is advanced, owing largely to the instruction she gets at Kidsland, they offer a regular routine of educational field trips and activities. We were eternally thankful to Ana and the Kidsland family for their hard work and courage in keeping their facilities open during the entire lockdown period. My wife and I could not have continued working had it not been for Kidsland taking steps to ensure they could continue providing services, even as many parents chose to remove their kids and isolate at home. Kidsland worked hard to not only keep the doors open but to ensure that every member of the Kidsland community was as safe as possible through social distancing, mask wearing, and regular cleaning. Fortunately, our daughter was able to maintain a mostly normal routine, avoiding much of the stress and fear that plagued so many young children forced to discontinue their school and daycare services. Finally, the community of kids and parents at Kidsland has been remarkable. Our daughter has made many close friends, and so have we. Weekend and after-school playdates with our daughter’s best friends and their parents are common. The friends our daughter has made are all among the sweetest and smartest kids I’ve encountered, and the parents we have met and gotten to know have all been intelligent, caring, and generous. There has not been a day over the last 2.5. years in which my wife and I have doubted our decision to enroll our daughter at Kidsland. Since our daughter started there we have never worried about her. We know that Kidsland always has our daughter’s best interests in mind and treats all the children there as if they were their own. We are so grateful to Ana, Ana Chica, Laura, and everyone else at Kidsland for the love and support they have provided for our daughter. * To the parent who posted the one-star review your review hardly provides any basis for criticizing Kidsland and certainly does not justify such vitriol. Indeed, I take personal offense to the assertion that Kidsland uses “predatory tactics” that “are intentionally and maliciously used on parents.” This is a ludicrous and arguably libelous accusation. From the beginning, we have had a close and open relationship with Ana and Ana Chica. They have always communicated effectively with us about any concerns we have had and gone out of their way to improve and make changes when necessary. We have never once felt they acted in any way that was predatory or dishonest. You might not have felt the same instant connection with the staff at Kidsland that we did—which is fine, sometimes people just don’t click—but to disparage them so harshly after just a few weeks of childcare is irresponsible and unfair. Moreover, there is absolutely nothing in your entire review that speaks to any genuine problems with the quality of the childcare itself. Your comments not only blemish the hard work and quality care Kidsland delivers, but the entire community of children and parents that attend and depend on Kidsland and who love the service they provide."

"Our daughter has been going to Kidsland (first on Addison, now on Dwight) starting around 1 year old for the past year+. We have had her attend part-time and so far it's been wonderful! We love the family who runs Kidsland, and our daughter truly enjoys her time there, whenever we arrive she walks right in and is happily playing whenever we pick her up. We feel we are paying for a family who truly cares about the kiddos, and we feel confident and safe having our daughter there. We recommend them to new families we meet out and about so much that our neighbor's kid started to attend as well!"

"Ana is a very nice, kind and patient teacher. My baby likes her so much and really has a good time in Kidsland. More importantly, my baby plays a lot everyday so he has a much better sleep at night now! I always have much concerns about my baby, and Ana always takes the trouble to respond to our messages, and send us pictures . I am really grateful for their work and I really appreciate it that they care about my baby so carefully and patiently. Also, I am looking forward to communicating with them more to track the performance of my baby."

"From the onset, our expectations for our child's care were very high, as the teacher, Ana, had guaranteed the program as one adhering to high standards of professionalism and care (and also given the high cost of the program: the weekly tuition fee of $496 and the non-refundable $255 enrollment fee, plus bi-annual material fee of $325). Initially, we were promised we’d receive 'constant' updates and photo documentation of our 11-month old child’s progress as he adjusted to the program. However, we found ourselves having to continuously ask their childcare provider the most basic of questions, as we did to Ana: “Did he poop? Did he drink water? And how many ounces? Did he drink milk? How many ounces? Did he sleep well? How much did he sleep?” She repeated to us that our child was fine, slept well, and had fun. But when we met in person the following day, she would entirely contradict this information, telling us, for example, that our child was not crying as much as yesterday, or that he’d slept more than the day before. In other words, we had no idea how our baby was doing throughout the day. In retrospect, we recognize that red flags concerning Anna’s professionalism were evident from the start, as she informed us that our child would have two “teachers.” --teachers that much later turned out to be assistants. We came to realize that assistant and teacher occupy two very different roles. Neither the assistant taking care of our child nor the other assistant employed in the program were ever formally introduced to us, the second of which we never actually met. In addition to this oversight, the lack of communication between the teacher and assistants was rather alarming. Often, the assistant and teacher would differ in the information given; while we’d hear from the assistant that the baby slept well for an hour, the teacher would say our baby had only slept for 20 minutes. For the above reasons, we came to the decision to terminate our contract during the "trial" adjustment period. Our reasoning included the bi-annual material fee of over $325, according to the contract, and the need to provide 4-weeks notice to interrupt childcare. Unfortunately, however, we were not adequately informed that the "trial" period was not, in fact, a trial period as advertised. We were asked to pay for the first 2 weeks and after week one, paid for an additional week on top of the first two. Our child was only in the program for two weeks, while our payments covered three. Despite removing our child from the program, our payment for the third week was not resituited, resulting in us expending a total of $1,743 for only two weeks of childcare. We naively understood that the first trial period was covered by the first 2 payments since the deposit would be applied to the last week (which corresponded to our second week) and as it is advertised in their website [Your first payment is equal to first and last week plus $255 of non-refundable enrollment fee. Your last week pf payment counts as your deposit. The deposit will be applied to your child's final week of care...] Ultimately, while $496 is perhaps a small fee for those overseeing this program, it is a significant amount for us, corresponding to one week of my current salary. It is incredibly unjust that this money was stolen from us with our baby receiving care for only two--and not three--weeks. It is clear to us that in this environment predatory tactics are intentionally and maliciously used on parents, and at this point, can only say thatI had hoped to have a more joyful memory of my son's first school. Please, read any childcare contract very carefully (we learned it the hard way), ask thousands of questions, and PLEASE, avoid KIDSLAND childcare, especially KIDSLAND DWIGHT (1092 Dwight) on Berkeley!"