Older kids in nursery pre-school, is this normal?

[mummytowillow]

My daughter has just turned 3, she is currently in her settling in period to move rooms to the pre-school part of her nursery. She seems to be settling in really well and the staff are pleased with her.

I went to collect her today and they were all outside playing, the garden they play in is well equipped, big and the kids love it! But it was chaos, I couldn't see her as there were so many children out there, what really concerned me was the older children? The nursery has an 'after school' club, so all the kids that are on school holidays can go to the nursery all day (max age 11), they were mixing with the kids from her current class (age 2 to 3) and the pre-schoolers 3+? So I asked one of the ladies in charge of the pre-school if this was normal and she said yes, the afterschoolers and pre mix together in one big room, but if there are lots of them they 'try' to keep them separate?? There were some 8-9 year olds playing with the little tikes cars etc, bumping into the little ones and generally being quite rough?

So, is this normal? Should I say something, or am I being a bit PFB!!! Or am I right to be concerned??

Well I had similar when DS1 was at pre-sch (I was working p-t) in the summer holidays.

If the weather was good, the staff took the big kids out but if not they mostly watched films, so of course DS1 did too.
I thought he could do that at home for free & for various other reasons I gave up work and took him out.

He also got v upset & angry as the big kids called him a baby as he was still in nappies quite late.

I don't agree with it but yes, it seems to be normal.

It is quite normal in a lot of settings however, the staff should be aware of the needs of the individual children and the care of older children should not adversely affect that of younger ones.

Personally I see a lot of benefits from cildren mixing with different age goups (obv this depends on how the staff manage the behaviour of all). It would be a shame if groups couldn't use shared spaces because a different age group was already using it ie: the garden, very few settings have seperate facilities for each age group so a certain amount of sharing space is inevitable.

I used to feel like this as my ds1's nursery often had after school kids in with the younger children. Although I do believe there is some benefit to mixing ages...it totally depends on the children, and the staff supervising them.

I think my worry stemmed from the fact that I wasn't there to make sure he was ok...but when we go out to local parks and play areas, he still mixes with older kids but I'm there to watch what's happening.

At the end of the day if it's a private nursery they want the money...