What does your 3/4 year old do at nursery?

[SoupDragon]

DD will be 3 in a few months and will get her funded hours in January She currently goes full time to a childminder but I'm toying with the idea of moving her, only for part of the week, to the nursery onsite at my work. I'm going to go and have a look about in a couple of weeks (undecided on whether to take DD with me for that visit!) and see what I think.

My reasoning is that I'd like her to go to preschool, but we don't have the option of a traditional sessional preschool due to mine and DH's hours. Our cm drops off and picks up at a local preschool that's pretty good but we would have to pay the cm for this and also for the hours she's at preschool to keep her place, and it'd be the full fee, so we wouldn't actually get much of the benefit of her 30 hours. Plus we'd have to buy them a rf car seat to transport her in.

So, for those of you who have 3/4 year olds in nursery, how is it comparable to preschool? What do the kids do? (nb I'm not looking for 'school' and structured lessons etc, of course). How much do you get to hear about of what they've been up to?

 

[CaptainMummy]

Edit.. I totally misread your post so this isn't much help. Sorry!!

My dd2 & dd3s are in nursery (both at the school nursery, dd3 is in the 2-3 room though she will be moving to the main nursery once she is 3)
My almost 4 year old is apparently a very busy girl at nursery (so say her teachers) and I know she is never ever bored! She doesn't really tell me much about what she does, usually just the 'main thing' that she did that day, but looking at pictures and photos in her learning journey and photos/artwork on the walls, its clear that she is always up to something, be it dressing up, playing with sand/water/foam, painting, playing outside, gym hall, stories, drawing... they have a ridiculous amount of toys and activities in the nursery and as far as I'm aware, nothing is off limits so they can do whatever they please really (obviously within reason and teachers help them when needed) She sings songs and is always coming home with songs I've never heard before. They have visitors, police, farmers, dentist... they get visited by 'childsmile' every few months when they get their teeth painted (fluoride varnish) and they do lots of healthy eating stuff and are always trying new foods (not my daughter as she is a nightmare with food, but I know they are great for snacks!)

As far as what she has learned, they have done topics on Minibeasts, China, Space, Autumn, and it's great to hear her coms out with little facts that I never thought she would have known. They don't do any formal learning for the littler ones, but the preschoolers do phonics (a sound per week) and practise writing their name, and more if capable (my dd1 was always the go to 'writer' as a preschooler as she was very neat and could write things to go on the wall.

Honestly, I love it. I love that they offer so many opportunities to do things we wouldn't normally do at home. both of my girls absolutely love nursery x

 

[c1403]

To me, pre school and nursery are the same thing just set up differently. They all follow the early years curriculum.
I noticed some school based nurserys and preschools do only Morning or afternoon sessions and are term time. However my DDs pre school is open 9-3.
Day nurseries are open all year round and longer hours, to me, they are more of a business and there to make a profit. Pre-schools are sometimes charities with volunteer committees etc.
However much of what your child actually does will be the same, it's all learning through play at this age, not much structure.

 

[Bevziibubble]

When my DD was in nursery she did lots of activities like singing, drawing, Playdoh, dancing, crafts, digging, playing in the sandpit, outdoor play etc. She didn't do anything academic like learning to read, but they learnt through play doing things like counting

 

[MindUtopia]

Preschool and nursery are exactly the same for 3/4 year olds. The only difference is that traditionally 'preschool' is term time only and 'nursery' is year round, but many nurseries still offer term time only sessions (ours does). The difference is just that preschools don't offer sessions out of term time, so people who have to work tend to go with nurseries. But what they do is exactly the same following the early years curriculum. Each nursery or preschool will vary a bit in what they emphasise just based on how they run.

Ours is more monetsorri style, so there are no separate classrooms. All the kids are together, 9 months to 4 years, though they might do different things throughout the day, they're generally in the same room or outside in the garden together, except when the little ones go away for nap time. So they do things like circle time, where they sit and sing songs and listen to stories, they do puppetry, they do drawing/painting/play doh/other messy play or crafts, they do just free play where they can dress up or play in the different stations or look at books in the book corner, build with legos or blocks. They're outside a lot of the day, play in a mud kitchen, do games, they cook/bake. They also do forest school sessions where they learn about plants and nature and bugs, etc.

Then there is more formal emphasis on learning specific skills, like number and letter recognition, writing their name, mark making and how to hold a pencil, but it's not like a formal session, like "now everyone sit down and we are going to learn letters." They just weave it into the rest of the day, like when they are drawing, someone will come and help teach them to write their name on their paper, or they'll play a number game together or something like that. Or when they're out, they'll practice counting with rocks or sticks, etc. Honestly, that's what they do in reception as well, so it's not much more formal once they get to school, at least in key stage 1.

They also do a lot of focus on personal care, using the toilet independently, washing hands, setting the table for lunch, tidying up, dressing and undressing independently, and social skills like sharing, turn taking, resolving conflicts, etc. That's the most important stuff for school really. Schools honestly don't expect them to come in knowing much about letters or numbers. They cover all that in reception anyway, so there's no rush (and your lo might just end up bored if they already know all of that). If they can recognise and write their name, that's great. Mostly, they just need to be able to do personal care and hygiene things on their own and that's enough. If you need to work, I would definitely go with a nursery. I think it's silly to pay more for a childminder to be doing pick ups and drop offs, which you can get fuller coverage and not so much back and forth with a nursery.

My daughter has been in nursery from 9 months and we love it. She's 4 and leaving for school in September. I never would have done preschool as the hours don't work for us and she wouldn't have had as much expose to other kids like she does now being in a setting with babies all the way up to school age children who come back for holiday club out of term. Also, personally, I think a nursery setting is better (at least around here). The preschools here are either at the school (she'll be at school her whole childhood, there's no reason to be in a school environment when they're little) or they were voluntary run by parents with few qualifications (the one preschool close to us we would have considered sending her to got shut down because it was just parent run and they were so disorganised and they ended up locking a little girl in the preschool and going home because forgot she was there! No one found her until like 3 hours later when her mum showed up to collect her and could see her screaming on the other side of a locked door in the dark!). Obviously, that's a very extreme situation, but it's why we wanted somewhere that was more professionally managed.

 

[SoupDragon]

This is great, thank you We are going for a look round on Tuesday, to see if it's still as good as I remember, and to talk about all the ins and outs - it's a lot less flexible than our childminder as far as shift changes etc goes, so it's going to be a case of balancing up whether what they offer is worth the change in routine and extra rigidity. Fingers crossed it will be!

 

[ferren090]

I think it is comparable to preschool.