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The lead teacher in the newborn room and recommendations from work. It is a center but feels very nice and cozy - not institutional.

The lead teacher has now become our primary babysitter...cant wait for #2 to start their when she makes her arrival!

I had a similar experience with choosing a home daycare (which I was resistant to vs a center because it felt safer and more regulated to me) but then someone recommended me their home daycare provider and we were sold. The things that helped were a) recommendation from a good friend that we trusted b) the cost was significantly less than all other options and c) when we met the provider, she just seemed like a lovely woman who would take great care of our daughter. It was gut instinct in the end. And in our state (VA), all daycare providers have to be licensed and regularly inspected so I did look at her (good) records and that really solidified it for me.

We are in a daycare center. We chose it because a former co-worker with two children recommended it, it felt like a very warm and nurturing environment, it was clean, organized, and the kids seemed happy. The price, schedule (hours, days, vacations), and location were right too.

-gut instinct
-price
-convenience

And we are 100% happy with our choice!

-excellent reputation
-tons of outdoor time, rain or shine
-got a good feeling from the teachers (and really love them now)
-location (beside a huge park and a 5 minute drive from our house)

*just felt "right"
*only 4 kids
*just a few blocks away!

I'm sad E starts a new place in Jan! But it'll be a good move

I was sold on gut instinct. The center she is at seems like such a fun place to be. There are colors, toys, the kids seem happy. The other center we visited felt very cold and institutional. The price difference was nice too (current center was $226/week for infant care vs. $282/week, and that was two years ago). I love the majority of the teachers too.

We are in a centre and I hope to always use centres for my kids, they are always open (we don't have to plan our holidays around someone else), the staff can take sick days and have breaks. Our DD also thrives with lots of friends around.
Selling features on this centre -
Proximity to our home, which is in a rural area.
Price is pretty affordable for a centre (585 a month for a preschooler).
Smaller classes, and often all the age groups do activities together. DD loves babies so this is nice for her.
They bus the kindergarten kids to and from our first choice of elementary school. So once DD is in kindergarten part-time and her brother is born and in the infant room we will have 1 drop-off and 1 pick-up.

I was on a waiting list at the center my nieces go to for almost 8 months. A month before my due date I realized, my daughter probably wasnt going to get a spot there when I returned to work. I put a frantic post on FB asking for rec's and a coworker suggested the center we're at now. I went on my lunch break one day and met the director, saw the class and met the teachers who would be with my daughter and toured the school. It was clean, happy, bright and colorful. It was in a neighborhood on a scenic street with a church and catholic school across the street. What amazed me the most was each classroom we went into all the kids were napping (at the same time!) it was like magic... They had a spot for LO, the price was right, and I figured worst case we moved her to the place with the waiting list when there was a spot. 2 years later and we LOVE our center.

for his first centre before we moved, we had a choice of a couple of places. I had the best vibe/impression from the one we chose. Distance wise, they were all the same. This one was also on the lower end of the costs.

His current one had really good ratings on the provincial list of licensed centres and it is a 2 minute walk from our house, i didn't even look at other ones! i went to visit obviously one time and got a good impression as well.

Cost and location. It was a nice bonus that it was also a Montessori!

It just felt right. Everyone that worked there had been there for years and they were just SO sweet and interacted with LO versus only talking to me. All the kids looked happy.

Just after we enrolled LO, we met a neighbor who asked what we were doing for daycare. We told her and she started gushing about the school. Her son had been in the big expensive center nearby and she had not had a great experience. They switched him to our school and it was like night and day. This school is a preschool following the public school calendar, so it was less convenient for her schedule, but she was clearly so happy there that it just felt serendipitous to meet her and hear that. We ended up meeting a few other neighbors that sent their kids to our school and loved it, so it just reinforced my feeling that it was a great place for LO.

We chose our center because my husband felt comfortable there. I had narrowed it down to a few options I was happy with, and when he visited them with me, this was the one that he felt like he really connected with the staff and the feel of the place. While I am quite the extrovert and feel comfortable in most places, he is not the same, so choosing a provider with whom he felt "at home" was very important to me.

(Didn't hurt that it was the cheapest, and we knew lots of other people who were happy with it!)

On our tour, the director made a joke about firing a parent for trying to insist on a ridiculous diet for her daughter. I knew that he and I had the same view on the world and would see eye to eye.

Clean, up to 21st century standards with a library and iPads for older children, attention to safety standards, lower than state student:teacher rations, use a curriculum