3 year old nursery:pre school free hours.

[Madallie]

Dd will be 3 in December and due to start her 15 hours free pre school place in January. She has just this week started doing 2 sessions, mon and tues 9-12 just to get her used to going.

Anyway, I've been given a form to fill in what times and day I require for January and I'm not sure what to do. A full day is 6 hours 9-3 and (2 sessions) and half day 3 hours is 9-12 (1 session).

Just wondered those of you with nursery/pre school children, do you do all mornings, all afternoons, a mixture or some full days and some half days?

Just wanted to see what works well for you and your child to give me some ideas of what I might sign up for.

My DS does 9-3 3 days a week, so using 15 free hours and I pay for the extra 3 hours
It works best for me as it means I can do 3 (almost) full days work

DS1 does 2 full days and 1 half day which suits us. Its an extra 3 hours plus 3 lunches per week on top of the 15 hours. He's just 4 though, he only did mornings last year. I think a lot depends on your own life and commitments really. Most children adapt to most situations pretty well I find.

We could only use 1 session a day so ds did 5 mornings and I paid for 4 afternoons as I worked 4 days.

We do a full day on a tuesday (to get used to being at school all day, eating lunch there etc), and mornings weds/thurs/fri (to get used to getting up and out of the house in the mornings!). This leaves us with a clear day on a Monday, so we can do whatever we feel like.

Works for us, though only because I am on maternity leave with DC2.

The lunch hour is funded for us but obviously not the lunch itself. I wanted DS1 to stay for lunch because he is a difficult eater at the best of times and it does him a lot of good to see everybody else just getting on with it and not faffing about. They go in with the reception class at the school so he's generally one of 60 odd children all doing the same thing.