Rise and Shine of Forest Hills

Our 2 year old has attended Rise & Shine daycare for the last 3 months and we couldn’t be happier with our choice. She has transitioned from nanny care, having heard only a foreign language at home. She has assimilated very well thanks to the supporting caregivers.
We’ve done some tours of other daycares in Forest Hills and nowhere else did we get as good of a vibe from caregivers/​manager as we did here right from the start.
Nikki (manager) is super nice. Ms Miriam and Ms Pam are sweethearts. They’ve all been there for a long time, which is a sign that Management treats them right and they’re happy to be there.
The facility is clean and safe, nothing fancy, which is fine, and you won’t find a personal chef cooking up an organic lunch. Also they follow a school calendar with 27 annual holidays. No, you won’t get an email with a daily summary of what the child ate and activities. However, they do have great activities and do a good job posting special moments on Facebook. With that said, I’ll take those small detractors any day given how happy my child is there and the open, candid communication I get from Rise & Shine. Also to keep in mind, Rise & Shine is one of the most affordable daycares in Queens or NYC, for that matter, so for the price, it’s more than fair.
The daycare is also very diverse in terms of caregivers and children, which provides a fantastic exposure for our child.
Now, regarding some other choices available in the area and why we’ve chosen Rise & Shine.
The Pre-​School of America felt too large with too many groups and little room for personalized attention, where, during our tour, we’ve actually witnessed a child being mistreated in a way that could have trigged a lawsuit (my negative review for that place was taken down from Unilocal because, as Unilocal explained, it «raised legal issues» the Unilocal didn’t want to be involved in).
The new Ivy Day daycare seemed alright but also too big with a playground in the basement, requiring kids to walk down the stairs — I can’t imagine a large group of 2 year olds with little coordination doing that safely. Not much diversity there either, mainly catering to one nationality (not American).
All My Children and another daycare down the block seemed really run down and required long term financial commitment and more annual holidays than I was ever aware of.
Toadler’s Pond gets rave reviews and the caregivers seemed pleasant. However, it’s home based and without an open door policy, which to me was a minus as I want to be able to check in on my child at any time and the open windows without guards seemed really unsafe for young kids.
In summary, I would highly recommend Rise & Shine vs other choices in the neighborhood.

My sister had a unpleasant experience that I will share:
The day care could be much better if they were to made big changes in the small class (Bear section 2 – 3 years old). This class is not fun at all due to the lack of efforts from some tired and strict teachers who sit on their chairs most of the time with sleepers, do not allow kids to fully express themselve including forcing them to stay on one ikea carpet all day, except when its time to pee, eat or sleep, I mean some of our living room are bigger! they do not take them out a lot even to the little day care’s backyard done for that purpose…
Because of these issues, kids do not learn much and some of them look miserable, crying for weeks and weeks. My sister had to take her kid out after a few weeks observing these issues and not liking the teacher’ style at all!
However, I hear and saw from many friends that the bigger classes are lovely, the teachers are very motivated, care for their children, initiate many activities and make a strong effort to enhance their learning and creativity.
They also manage to take them out to Yellowstone park. They are usually very happy kids and parents
It is unfortunate that the small class does not follow the same path, maybe management should look into it!

My son just graduate from the pre-​k program this year, he has been in this place for more than 1.5 years and he loves it here! He makes lots of friends and get a group hug every time we leave. Everyone is so attentive and caring, highly recommended!