I work nights, so does not apply to me. I know some centers have preschool hours (for older kids , prek 3 and prek 4) and then childcare available surrounding that. our preschool is at a college, we can pay for afterschool care for up to 4pm... most people hire one of the grad assistants to watch their kids when needed or have other college students watch their child.
The daycare we have been using since DD was 4 months old has several classrooms for 3, 4, and 5 year olds. It is like a preschool with daycare hours. Most full time working moms I know who use a nanny or in-home daycare initially switch to a daycare center for preschool sometime between ages 2 and 4.
Heather Margaret --- Feb '07 and Todd Eldon --- April '09
I am a SAHM, but our preschool tries to hook working moms up with SAHM's to set up carpooling. I drive a 4 year old to and from preschool every day, and have been asked to be a back-up driver for the 4-year old's cousin. There are also 1-2 kids who ride public transportation (this is a very small community with less than 10,000 people, and, although I would not be comfortable with it, it seems to be an option for some families).
Warning
No formatter is installed for the format bbhtml
For us, if we didn't have our nanny, there would be no way for us to have them in the prechool they are in now(9-11:30 or 12:30-3:00). I would had to find a preschool with daycare which just means more $$$. We are lucky because it is great and inexpensive.
We use a daycare center based preschool so we don't have to worry about the transportation issue. I have a few friends who use home based care and their sitters are willing to take their kids to preschool for them but I think that is rare. I could only use a full time program so it is limiting. My school district has a full time Pre-K program which I moved my older DD into and will do the same with younger DD (assuming I get in - spots are hard to get). My older DD does a special speech preschool 2x a week for 90 mins each and my sister and ILs each take a day a week and drive her - they pick her up at Pre-K drive her to speech preschool and then back. No way I could do it without them. I could bus her but then she would miss so much of her regular school since the bus takes forever.
We picked one of the two preschools we found that offered extended care. It was the only way we could have DD go. We both work full-time during the day and didn't want to ask our sitter to take time out of her day to take her and pick her up. She goes to the extended care program before and after preschool if needed and goes to the sitter's house the other days.
Re: Pre-school times q's
We have a sitter who picks DS1 up from school and brings him home until I get home.