Action Day Primary Plus – Mountain View

My kids were enrolled there for over four years and they just recently started elementary school. The caretakers are wonderful and many of them have been working there for many years. Ms. Ginger always greets the kids with a big smile, Ms. Lori and Ms. Debbie are caring and consistent. There are many other great caretakers. They have a lot of fun activities during the summer months, also parades for Halloween and Holiday pageants in December. They reply to emails in a timely basis. The location is excellent — next to a park and away from busy streets. I highly recommend the ADPP in Mountain View.

I sent my 14 month old and my 3 year old here for 2 days. I was disappointed with the staff in that I said «hello, were new and this is our 1^st day, what do we do?» And it was still like pulling teeth to get the mostly un-​smiling staff to show me where to take my kids and put their stuff etc.
What really upset me is that I dropped my 14 month old off at 7:15am with a very slightly pink bum (not even enough to call it a diaper rash) and even gave them some diaper rash cream in case. I picked him up at 3pm after they had just changed his diaper and took him home. I changed him a couple hours later and found an open sore on his bum that no one bothered to mention to me! It was super painful and my little man was so uncomfortable when I washed and medicated it :(when I called to complain, they basically blew me off and said they would talk to the staff about better communication… That’s true, they needed to tell me right away but how about they also talk about better care! The only way that could possibly happen is if he was left on a poopy diaper for waaay too long!
The only reason I’m giving them 2 stars was because my 3 year old seemed to have a good time although again, the staff leaves a lot to be desired in the customer service category.

I used to send my kids to Action Day Mountain View. I really liked the teachers. They care about kids and they were very helpful for potty training and gave good advice. My two stars are given to those teachers. Otherwise, I would give zero star. I hated the Action Day Primary Plus management staff. They were arrogant and not caring. They had a very bad customer service (they did not even say hi). One time (in 2014), they even e-​mailed all parents to request for a positive Unilocal review, so they could give us $ 10 gift, which I felt that they were trying to manipulating the Unilocal rating using an inappropriate method.

My son has been here for over a year now, and I’m very happy with Action in Mountain View. He started as one of the youngest in Room B (infants that can crawl or walk, but not yet super communicative), and has graduated up to Room C (babies that are not potty trained yet, but are more autonomous). It definitely took some adjusting from the place we had him at before, which was a home daycare, but he made a lot of friends, the staff all knew him by name (anyone in the baby rooms and the office staff), and they really helped make structure easier for him. The first person who took care of him didn’t seem to connect with him as much, but the second person in Room B (Angelica) was amazing. He sees her when he’s leaving his room now, and still goes running to give her a big hug. In Room C, they’re starting to provide more structure, and he’s picking up incredible language and dexterity skills daily. His primary care giver adores him (several others that are in the room as well), and he’s happy to go to his classroom every day. They provide a lot of opportunities for structured play, indoor and outdoor time, art projects, and most of the parents of other kids in the room are friendly with each other. It’s a nice, eclectic mix of children from different ethnic backgrounds, and I think our little guy is getting a good opportunity to learn and grow.

My daughter is attending to Action Day Primary Plus since about 1 month ago and we love it. Her teachers are always very nice and the people in the office area always says good morning and good bye (in our last preschool wasnt always that way).
She is in room 2 and hasn’t cried any single day, she goes happy thinking that she’s going to play with her classmates in the big yard they have.
We are happy we moved my daughter to this school! I can tell she is happy there!
Edited 11/​04/​2015: My daughter is now in Room 5, the Jr Kindergarden program. We still love this place, I am very happy that she has been here for the last almost 2 years.
The dance program they have with the West Valley Dance Company is amazing and the annual performance is incredible, my daughter loves it.
The summer party is super fun for parents and for kids.
I consider myself lucky to have found this place that has helped my daughter grow and mature so much. I am very sad that this is her last year, and if their elementary school location was closer to my house I wouldn’t doubt a minute to enroll her there for elementary school too.

Pros: They open at 6:30AM many don’t open until 7AM. They give discounts so always ask about their discount policies. My son has been attending since he was 4 months and we loved his caregivers in room A. They always took very good care of him and watched over his well being. I love that they keep him active with projects for him to take home. These make great memories.
Cons: Not as happy about room B. I think it all goes well as long as my son doesn’t have any issues such as diaper rashes or feeding issues. Unfortunately, I don’t always feel comfortable leaving him there when he has a diaper rash because he always comes home with it a lot worst than I left him. Apparently the daily notes I leave them don’t always get read or just not followed though? They also aren’t able to get him to eat his full meal? If he refuses they just leave it at that and no further attempt is made. When at home he always eats his meals in full but then again he doesn’t have his friends hanging around playing with him at home. Emails to the front office don’t always get answered but if I call they always answer.
All in all they are all wonderful people but I can’t wait for him to move onto the next classroom.

My daughter has been going to Action Day for 1 year now; she started when just under 3 years old. She stared out in Room 2 and is now in Room 3. Aside from the expected transition insecurities, she’s been very happy there. Nowadays she runs in and doesn’t mind me leaving, and she gives her teachers big hugs when she leaves.
The teachers have all been very pleasant and good to work with and they give me informal updates on how she’s doing. The front desk staff is very nice and quickly responds to emails or any issues.
They have flexible scheduling and a great Parent’s Night Out once a month where they provide the dinner, a craft project, playtime and a movie. They also have a weekly dance class for a little extra money.
I have a couple of co-​workers who had their children at this facility from infancy up until they went to Kindergarden and they tell me that they were happy with the care here and felt that their kids were well prepared for Kindergarden when they went.

My son went to Action Day from the time he was 4 months old to 7 months old. We then moved to San Francisco and had to find a new day care.
Overall, I was pleased with the attention my son got in «room A» — the non-​crawling infant room. I liked that on most days he had a primary care giver. I felt they did well in trying to maintain a regular eating and sleeping schedule. However, there were some days when someone else would have to care for him — though I found the other caregivers to be very good and familiar with my son as well.
Most days when I came to pick up my son he was happily playing. There were a few days though when he didn’t have a nap and he would be fussy and over-​tired. My son, at that age, needed help going to sleep and I think if it was particularly noisy or if the caregiver didn’t have enough time to rock him to sleep then he’d go without a nap. The flip side to this is that my son started to learn to go to sleep with less assistance and with more noise around. As time went on my son became more routinely happy at Action Day. (Every kid needs some time to adjust to new surroundings.)
What I really appreciated with Action Day was their flexibility in changing my son’s sleeping and eating schedule as needed. My son went from drinking nothing but breastmilk to having one, then two solid meals a day. Whenever I came in and told the caregivers what my son should be eating they were happy to accommodate. They also helped my son learn to take food from a spoon, which is a little challenging.
If I could change anything about Action Day, I would change the following things:
* Change the layout/​architecture of the room so the babies have a quieter nap space to sleep in.
* If it is a quiet day and the ratio of babies to caregivers is lower than it has to be, still keep the primary caregivers for all the babies there rather than moving them to other rooms. There were a few days when our primary caregiver was moved to another room for the day because they had more than enough adults in the infant room… I really wish my son could have just kept his primary caregiver for those days. (And he would have gotten more individual attention, too)
* Allow parents to bring in frozen breastmilk/​tubs of formula and empty bottles so we don’t have to prepare and label all the bottles in advance ourselves.

I wish I could take away stars! I have wanted to write this for a few months but I have just about managed to get over how upset this place left me & my child. My 2 year old went there for 2 days & I was so sad to find him in tears with a tinier body in just those two days. He needed help with his meals and no body offered him that help! He had dried up salt from his tears in his ears! He could not sleep because he was hungry & they played outside in the bright sunshine all day! No one called me or told me when I called that he was struggling!
What makes me so angry is that at the time i toured the place all ladies in charge said they encourage kids and help them in the transition phase when a child is getting used to the place. I did tell them my child needed help eating & I was repeatedly told to relax because they are experts with kids. But the day they didn’t feed him for the whole day, when i asked why he was crying, the class teacher said she has no time to give individual attention! I found nothing consumed from his lunchbox! If a 2-​year old doesn’t deserve individual attention I don’t know how this place gets a license! I took my baby out & found much better places at better prices. I feel guilty to this day that I allowed my child into that forsaken place!
Send your kids there only if they can take care of themselves and are great with whatever environment you leave them in!

We’ve had our son enrolled in the MV Action Day Primary Plus for almost a year, starting when he was about 21 months old (now just over 2.5). He started in Room 1 with mostly 2-​year olds and is now in Room 2, and has loved it everyday. Ms. Amelia & Ms. Terry in Room 1 were AMAZING and transitioned my son from his stay-​at-​home mom to daycare perfectly. Ms. Lauren & Ms. Laurie in Room 2 do an AMAZING job teaching, playing, and watching him. All his teachers have communicated well and updated me at all times on anything good, bad, or otherwise.
The teachers are great, and I truly believe they care about every kid in there. My son is barely 2.5, & I put the burden on myself as his father (& my wife too) to teach him to read, potty-​train, ABC’s, #‘s, etc, but the staff beats me to it! At home he’ll start singing the ABC’s or doing other new «tricks» that I’m amazed at, especially considering some of it isn’t stuff from home. As for potty-​training, he wants nothing to do with it at home, yet at school, he wants to partake in that learning process, and is making huge progress, which is a pleasant surprise and something I think goes above and beyond what a daycare should do.
The office staff are great! I’m always greeted by a smile, they always say goodbye to myself and my son (by name!), & I get a sense that they truly care. Every time I’ve ever called or emailed about something, I’ve gotten an immediate response. Kudos to Jessica, Jenna, & Emma.
The facilities are great IMO. It’s an old elementary school (in a great residential neighborhood), and outfitted perfectly for kids. It’s updated, clean, and everything I could expect/​want. The playground areas are nice, big, plenty of equipment (which is nice b/​c that eliminates the bickering about who gets to use what), and always excess supervision. In addition to the 2 classroom teachers, there always seems to be 1 or 2 more «helpers”/“floaters», you get my drift.
As for the education, my kid is 2, I don’t expect him to come home having learned to read & compute algebraic equations, and I know what my wife & I teach him, and it’s easy to see that he is retaining TONS of knowledge from here, which is HUGE to me (I send him here primarily for daycare, not to fast-​track into MENSA).
As for people giving low ratings but not having sent your kid here, how about you rate stuff that you actually have knowledge of & not just a 5 – minute snapshot. There are always going to be little things here or there, and parents aren’t perfect, I’m not, & I don’t expect a daycare teacher to equal or exceed my own parenting skills. I can’t say enough great things about this facility and the staff.

I’ve had my infant here for a month now and feel completely comfortable with the care they provide my daughter. The daycare is under new management and looking at the previous bad reviews I can say that I’ve never seen any of the chaos or babies being ignored. I stop in frequently and unexpectedly all the time and every time, I see all the babies being well cared for. The teachers are fabulous and the daycare is very well organized. The babies get their own cribs and have cubbies for diapers, food and clothes. When you check-​in in the morning, you fill out a daily infant care record with last fed, babies sleep, health comments and just general comments. Your caregiver will fill out the form throughout the day to let you know when your baby was fed and how much, napped and for how long and diaper changes. It’s very informative and helpful. Everyone is very friendly and I feel like the teachers and staff truly care about my baby girls well being. When I pick her up, she is smiling, fed and changed.

This is for their preschool and daycare program. The number of children there is staggering!!! My children were not well attended and my daughters diaper was changed ONCE in 8 hours! My potty trained son pooped his underwear and has a rash on his bottom because he was allowed to sit in it for god knows how long before they took his underwear, pants and socks and stuffed them all into a bag without removing the feces, which could have easily been emptied into the toilet. Why on Earth would you send my child home with a bag of his own feces?! Niether of my children, (who are excellent nappers,) were able to take a nap at this over crowded, noise filled, understaffed daycare. HORRIBLE!!!

This place is near my work so I registered in order to drop off my older kids while I run errands. The care was nice and safe and I don’t think I will be worried about my kids when they are there. Definitely would have preferred more focused attention and more activities to stimulate them while they are there, but that’s the difference between daycare and a nanny.

I just moved my son from MyDream Academy in Sunnyvale to Action Day Primary Plus in Mountain View and the only thing I can say is that I miss MyDream Academy.
The rooms are really small and when you have 16 kids at the same time it’s total chaos. In addition to that the teachers are all really young and don’t seem to really care about the kids. They also don’t really care about you saying hello and goodbye is optional I guess!
You need to pre-​mix your milk bottles and put a daily tag on them! An amazing way to wasted my time every morning!!!
Also the classroom agencement is terrible you have to remove your shoes or wear pads to drop the food and pick-​up the time-​sheet. Of course sign-​in and sign-​out it’s in the main office at the opposite of the classrooms.
The only reason why we are go here it’s because it’s convenient but are going to start looking for a home nanny.

I have recently had my 8 month old daughter at Action Day Care in Mt. View and have been extremely happy with my daughters care givers/​teachers. I have found the Director Jenna is the most caring director and fully capable of her responsibilities. You can see how much they all love the children in their care. Last night they had a Luau for the children and parents that included a Hawaiian Feast, music, hula dancer, face painting, and a huge blow up water slide. I would highly recommend this daycare since my daughter comes home everyday happy and sweet as when I drop her off.

I never sent my child here, I just toured the facility. I toured a dozen daycares during the same time, and this was the only one that I flat-​out refused to consider.
1. In the infant room, I saw babies «parked» in bucket seats – not during a snacktime, just parked there. Crying babies ignored, not enough caregivers in the room at the time I saw them.
2. The director did not seem to know the names of any other children except one who I think was her niece. This was by far the biggest daycare I saw, and it did not have the community feeling other smaller centers have.
3. The toddler room was crammed full of toddlers falling all over each other. The inside space was just not big enough to hold that many children. It was the most crowded center I have seen: other centers I saw didn’t have more than 8 – 10 kids per classroom of that size. It was deafening, there were kids crying, staff doing nothing about it.
4. I got a distinct vibe that the staff were not treated as competent people. I overheard some minor scolding about paperwork. A lot of the staff that I saw looked very young (not necessarily bad, but it does mean they aren’t very experienced).
All of the accords with the other reviews here, especially the ones from people that have worked there.

A bit of a warehouse for kids.
I had my 4-​year old there for 3 months. The teachers were nice in his room, but there was no coaching. I never saw any coaching, positive reinforcement, diversion, or any real system applied to help the kids get along.
I signed up my 2-​year old to join my 4-​year old, but only had him there 3 days and then pulled both kids out. The 2-​year olds are in a back room where you have to open a door to observe them, and what goes on in there really bothered me. The main teacher Liz just barked at the kids. I never heard a gentle word from her. The other two teachers were nice, but never did anything to coach the kids. They slammed all the kids through an art project, just barking orders at them for what to do next. Everything was like that. They played Queen for music and I think it really stressed the kids out. Crying kids were completely ignored. Kids who didn’t want to sit for story time were picked up and plunked in place in a very ungentle manner and barked at if they moved.
I complained to the director, Kate, but by that point I had been pretty unimpressed with Kate and already planned to take both my kids elsewhere. Honestly when I mentioned positive reinforcement, positive discipline, diversion and all that to Kate, I didn’t get the feeling that she even knew what they were.
The thing that bothered me the most was what a show the teachers in the 2’s room put on for me; talking so pleasantly about how Ben was having such a nice time and little details about his day. Kate did the same, reporting this detail and that. And yet what I witnessed was impatience and unkindness towards the kids.
Just a very impatient, non-​compassionate place for my 2-​year old and nothing special for my 4-​year old. No thank you.

I visited a number of facilities before deciding on Action Day. I searched a variety of types (Montessori, In Home, Church Based etc). From the first visit, I just felt comfortable there. That said a lot to me. I investigated further and decided to send my son there (starting at about 2 yrs old, he is now 3 ½).
The school had a flexible schedule that I like (part time could be any day of the week, even just 1 day). They worked with me to help my son adjust to being at home with me or a nanny to being in a school setting. They were very caring for him when I dropped him off crying and helped him cope with the transition.
I like their mix of play time and some basic academics. They do many art projects and have a great variety of tools. They also offer a number of different ‘extra’ classes: spanish, tumbling, dancing etc. They also do a holiday concert which is just a slice of toddler-​Americana, a rite of passage. Very fun.
I love the grounds. So many places I saw had only cement play areas and no trees. This facility had shade, grass, sand and lots of room to play. A very important detail for everyone happiness, in my opinion. Also, a number of rooms so the kids are with their own age group but are also exposed to a variety of ages.
The staff has been very helpful when I’ve had questions or wanted some support with a certain issue. They’ve offered suggestions and shared funny stories from the day (even teachers who are not his primary teachers). The office staff has been helpful and encouraging as well. They have encouraged me to come to them with any concerns and are frank about any licensing questions or reports. They keep the parents informed by posting reports from licensing authorities or in regards to recent illnesses in the classrooms.
Hope this helps :)

My daughter really liked Primary Plus, she was there for 3 years (age 2 – 5). She truly loved many of the teachers and clearly formed bonds with them.
Pros:
— Many of the teachers are there for years. That continuity is great as she had her choice of who to hit up for attention.
— Many of the teachers care about their jobs a great deal.
— One day, my daughter came home from daycare and she was potty-​trained. Somewhat embarrassingly, I didn’t have to do a thing.
— My daughter learned to read at the age of 4 thanks to the phonetics taught by Ms. Marlene.
— Some of the staff were willing to babysit occasionally — it was great to have a babysitter that my daughter already knew and loved.
Cons
— Staff seems overworked. My request to have my daughter moved up to the next room with older kids was forgotten for months. Meanwhile, she didn’t need naps anymore and was bored silly waiting for the 2 hrs to pass by. This was my daughter’s only complaint during the entire 3 years.

I’ve sent both my boys, now ages 4 and 2, to this place for daycare since they were newborns. As a former elementary school, the buildings are well-​suited to daycare for kids of varying ages, as they have separate rooms for infants, crawling babies, walking toddlers, potty-​trained kids, and older kids. They graduate your child to the next room as your child matures. They also have great facilities for playgrounds and indoor and outdoor play areas, scheduled activities, preschool teaching, and special holiday events to keep things interesting. One Friday a month they provide a «parents night out» where they will watch your kids until 10pm (for a reasonable fee).
The staff are great, and very attentive to special requests from parents. We’ve only had a problem with one teacher among many, and the staff were pretty good about moving our child to another class. To be fair, I think that teacher was overbooked, as the other teacher for that class was on leave. When we had our second child I didn’t hesitate to sign him up.
They are part of the Primary Plus chain of child care centers in the south bay, and they also run private schools for K-​8 grades. I’m actually planning on sending my child to their school, as our local elementary school is one of the lowest ranking schools, while the Primary Plus school gets good marks and the fees are reasonable.