Daycare and preschool?

Madringal

My DD currently goes to daycare 3 days a week and my MIL watches her the other two.  Her daycare has a preschool program that several of my friends use.  My MIL insists that DD still needs to go to a "real preschool" the days that she is not in daycare.  She offered to take her when the time comes.  Does anyone do this?  Sounds like a waste of money to me.

Pesky

My daycare also has preschool and private kindergarten.  She is in preschool now and it is very much a preschool.  You can always go and ask to check out the rooms and curriculum.  But just because it's with a daycare doesn't mean it's not a "real" preschool.

el25

This is actually a decision that I am dealing with right now.  I guess it depends on the age of your child.  The main difference that I see is that in our daycare, even though the kids are learnng, their "teachers" aren't really teachers,  They are required to have some early childhoon education experience, but they don't need a masters.  At most preschools in my area, the teachers are really teachers.

jlw2505

I don't think she needs to go to a separate preschool if she is in the center based one unless you really dislike how they run it or want something different.  My kids started FT daycare as infants.  They moved into the preschool program at 2 years (DD#1) and 19 months (DD#2).  I moved my older DD into the public schools FT Pre-K program this past fall at 4 1/2 for a few reasons - she needed more stucture than the daycare preschool was giving her, she has a sever speech delay and we were having to take her to speech therapy once a week which was a logistics issue as they would not go to her daycare center as it was out of district and lastly because we want to open enroll and the pre-k program is in the district we want to open enroll to and if you do this pre-k program you are put at the top of the open enrollment list come kindergarten.  It has been the best decision we made to pull her out of the center program and into this pre-k program.  She is now getting her speech through the district and we are set to open enroll in this district.  We are holding her back a year so she'll repeat the program.  For my other DD, I don't think she would need the difference in structure as much as my older DD did but I still plan to move her into the pre-k program simple because its an amazing program and I know she will thrive in it - she would do fine staying where she is until kindy though.

LaurenC804

My DS goes to daycare 2 days a week and my mom watches him the other day I work.  I started off the year with him also doing "preschool" one day a week when I was home.  We recently quit.  It was just too much.  Personally, I think it is tto confusing to have two different sets of teachers, rules, etc.  Plus a waste of money.  He is getting what he needs at the daycare especailly if they are educationally based.