To not understand nurseries that offer mornings only/ 6 hours a week/ 3 afternoons a week/

[Napqueen1234]

Hello,

Not meant to be in any way goady just genuinely interested. Our nursery only offers full day (can do half days as ‘extras’ if staff available) and all the children seem to do 3+ days a week 9-5 or just before and after matching working hours.

I’m always seeing on mumsnet ‘DC does 3 mornings a week’ ‘DC does 6 hours a week’. Where/what are these nurseries? Do you work or is it SAHP only who would do this? We want to move DD from the private nursery to one attached to primary school for 3-4s next year but even that explicitly states ‘we rarely offer less than full time places and only in exceptional circumstances’. Obviously that could be difficult for those only entitled to 15 free hours childcare as they would have quite a lot of ‘top up’ hours to pay for if forced to send a child full time so may put people off. If we asked her private nursery for her to do x hours eg 6 a day they’d look at us like we were mad and we would have to pay a full days fees £58 regardless if she was there full 11 hours or only 6.

So I just wonder what’s the set up with these nurseries? do you sort of share a place with another child eg your DC does 3 morning and another child 3 afternoons? Going on mat leave soon and I want to keep DD in nursery and would have loved to drop to half days but after extensive research locally (Manchester!) nowhere offers this?!

Thanks!

I’m not a SAHM. It was hard to manage - I had a childminder from 11.30 onwards for the days that I work - but I really wanted them to go to the attached school
Nursery rather than a private one which would have had more flexible hours

Thanks @YouSirOweMeOneNewHat

DS started at a private nursery and they were very accommodating. He could have gone in for any combination of hours but ended up with three extended days (7.30am-6pm), term-time only.
He is now at a another private nursery. He's there 2 days a week 9am-5pm and three days a week 9am-3pm. It's based on my working hours.
Hes likely to move to a state nursery next summer and the choices were:
7.30am-noon (includes breakfast), 7.30am-1pm (includes breakfast and lunch), 7.30am-3pm (breakfast and lunch), 7.30am-4pm (breakfast and lunch) or 7.30am-5pm (breakfast and lunch). All are meant to be 5 days a week.

I'm pretty sure preschools should offer half days. My son started with two mornings and is now on three mornings

I have a nursery attached to my school (and in all the schools I’ve worked in) for 3-4 y/o. They don’t charge - it’s like a typical school day 9-3:30 but there is breakfast club and after school club available for working parents. It might be an idea to see if this nursery attached to the school is the same. I would honestly be gobsmacked if parents had to pay.

Pre-school is usually 9-3 option of 9-12 or 12- 3 and term time only. Nursery open all year round open from 7:30 or 8:00 - 17:30 or later. Many people up North seem to call both facilities nurseries.

Plenty of parents only need 3/4 days a week childcare (and often dont want Mon and/or Fri) which means there are places available if you are willing to use just these few hours. When we moved area, the local preschool only had space two mornings a week so ds only did about 7 hours a week.

My kids go to a “nursery and preschool” haha. In reality that means that they are open all day 7am-6pm but they run their preschool 9-12. The kids can just do the preschool or stay all day and you pay accordingly. Probably about half of them stay all day. Mine just do preschool, although my DS started off in the full nursery as I was working.

I love it as it’s flexible. If I needed to, they could stay until 6 at very little notice. They are a very small nursery though and undersubscribed. I guess the full ones can afford to only offer full time places as they know they’ll get taken up

Our nursery is quite flexible - offers morning sessions 8 - 1, afternoon sessions 1 - 6 and full days (full days work out cheaper than 2 half day sessions) also 'school hours' places ie 9 - 3pm. Minimum attendance is two sessions a week but can be term time only.

in our area, most nurseries offered 5 mornings or 5 afternoons, from age 2.
It was actually very hard to find all day placements for working parents.

The nursery we used was happy for me to say dd was only going to go 4 days a week aged 3, not 5. Her 15 hours were split over those 4 days, and I didn't pay any extra.

But most school based nurseries said 5 mornigns or nothing.

Around here, school nurseries are mornings or afternoons 5 days a week and treated like school, with uniforms and teachers etc. Private nurseries or Day nurseries near me offer mornings, afternoons or full days, with any combination allowed, although many will say a minimum of two "sessions". Mine go one full day a week.

Not the norm here. All nurseries offer half or full days.
My son goes one morning a week (8am-1pm)

Town in the North-West.

I’m in Manchester and my son’s nursery offer full or half days. He goes 3 full days but lots of the kids do mornings/afternoons. We visited a few others that offered the same set up so not that unusual.

@Napqueen1234 I think pre-schools typically offer this and usually aren’t the solution to childcare for full time working parents vs. Nurseries that are open 10 hours a day.
Pre-schools typically run term time only, and offer 1/2 day sessions. Ours has a choice of 2 am’s, 3am’s or 5 am’s (9-12) and have afternoon sessions 2x a week (12-3) that are for older children the term before they go to school to get used to full days. Very few children have both parents working full time unless a grandparent does childcare. The occasional nanny.
My BFF’s little one just started pre-school and attends one afternoon a week 12-3:30. It’s a pre-school not a nursery/crèche that’s open all year and has all ages 0-4. This pre-school only has 2.5-4 year olds and is term time only.

There’s a difference between preschool places - those which accommodate the 15hrs or 30hr for 3/4yo - and those that offer full wrap around childcare. Some nurseries offer one or the other, some offer everything.

Ours does everything. We take preschool children only doing 15hrs funded hours but we also have children doing 7-6 a few days a week. Every nursery will be slightly different and allocate spaces as suits them best so it’s worth exploring your options.

We use a private day nursery and pay in sessions, morning and afternoon, a session is either 7:30-1 or 1-6:30 but you can drop off and pick up whenever you like in that time as long as you let them know they'll be there or not for meals, we pay full day rate but DH starts later that day and drops of at half nine and I pick up at five. I worked from home last week on nursery day and DS was napping so I took him in at ten.

My 2 go to a nursery where they call the oldest group pre-school. A day session is 8 hours but they are open 7-6 and you can pay for extra hours. Mine go 3 days a week about 7.15-5. We pay for 7-5.30 to allow for flexibility/traffic issues. DS moved up to the pre-school in September but it's the same arrangement.

The nursery my son went to (Manchester area) offered full or half day sessions. They also allowed me to do different days each week to fit in with my shift pattern, which was amazing, but I’m not sure they offer this anymore.

My kids nursery does full days 7.30am - 6pm, or mornings only 7.30am - 12.30pm or afternoons only 12.30pm - 6pm

And those hours are fairly standard where I live.

DS preschool does morning or afternoon sessions (3 hour long session). They do require a minimum of 4 sessions a week, but as its a preschool most kids are on 15 hours funding (it's only for children in the year or 2 before they start reception).

Preschools struggle for funding. Ours doesn't offer the 30 hours on govt funding, and they like it if you volunteer to top up the government rate to their usual much higher rate.

OP around here in London the ones doing only mornings term time only are called playgroup, and what I thought was a playgroup is a stay and play.

I'd say 75% of the children at playgroup with DS have a nanny around the 5 mornings a week 9-1, so Nanny does 1-6pm. The rest have SAHP. We are in London. The playgroup is a charity.

DS goes as its cheap, and I've got a chronic illness so schedule all my hospital appointments and physiotherapy during nursery hours. He's an only child so I like him having the time with other children.

It's a sessional nursery. My dd did 5 mornings a week, they were only open 9-12. Typically they are in school grounds (but independent) many schools have them here. No good for working parents of course

Ps completely covered by free hours then. Still open but apparently they now charge for snacks. Age 3+ and had to be potty trained, preschool not nursery

Look for Montessori or preschool rather than nursery, and you’ll find it. Though a lot seem to be closing around here, which is such a shame as I think three mornings a week from about 2yo is the perfect introduction to groups and learning, if you can make your other childcare work around it.

It depends what you're looking for in a nursery. DD had some early attachment and health issues due to a traumatic birth so we wanted a general intro to nursery as we actually have childcare covered by very happy GPs (who would probably be quite pissy at me taking 'their days'). I chose a very flexible nursery that thought 1 or 2 sessions (half days) was perfect for my 14 month old. I'm actually doing 1 morning a week for her on one of my off days in case she needs collecting and to build a relationship with the nursery. Some of my friends have chosen a different nursery because they have mostly boys who are more physically advanced and the bigger nursery has more space and a ball pit. But it's more pricey and very inflexible. Personally I think nursery has to work for the whole family and if It doesn't I would look for an alternative. A whole day for DD would be too much and that isnt a judgement on anyone else it's just her personality and where she's at.