Does your nursery have a 3-5 age room, and how well does it work?

[EightiesChick]

I don't know if this is absolutely standard or whether there are some/many that still have 1 year age groups. At our nursery there are 2 rooms for the 3-5 year olds, so it could be reorganised so that it's one room for the 3 yos and one for the 4s and up or something similar.

Just wondered what people's feelings were about the 2 year stint (potentially) in the same room. At the moment I'm having some doubts about how well it works for the younger ones if there is lots of emphasis on being 'school-ready' for the older ones. Would be interested to hear what others think.

DD was at a small nursery with a 3 to 5 room. They differentiated by the individual needs of the child, but encouraged the school ready skills of dressing, shoes, toileting and concentration more in those who were within 6 months of school. DD being a girl benefited being encouraged in these skills earlier than if she had been in a 3 year old room.

My dd nursery has two 3 to 5 year old rooms. DD is going up inot the pre school room next month. She is upset that one of her friends is going into one room and she is going into the other.

Children vary a lot in their development. Dd is more school ready than many four year olds inspite of not being three yet.

I think a lot depends on the layout of your nursery. If it was me I would have two preschool rooms and have different activites in each one. Ie. quiet activites like jigsaws, pen control and the more noisy active activites in the other room. I would make sure that all children spent time in both rooms. I am not sure how practial my suggestion is with the EYFS and staffing issues.

At my DD's nursery there are two 3-5 year rooms, two 2-3 year rooms and two 0-2 year rooms. DD is about to move up into the 2-3 year grouping and personally feel that there is more of a developmental difference in the 0-2 year age group than the 3-5 year age group. From what I can gather from the 3-5 year age group they are split into those that are coming up to starting school and those that are not for part of the day to concentrate on school related stuff.

At ds nursery there are three rooms between the ages of three and five though its a bit fluid when they move depending on age and maturity. I love that they aren't thrown together with a wide age range though DS is desperate to be in the 'big boy' older rooms!!

But I guess different things suit different children and I dare say that there are things DS would get from the set up you describe that he won't get from
His current set up.

My dd's nursery had one floor for preschool with one main room, one messy room and a smaller quiet room for storytime etc. Worked really well. Better than separating them because then they had separate spaces for different actives/ playing with toys, dolls etc. They split them into smaller groups a lot of the time but they were all together some of the time too which meant that my dd wasn't too daunted when she started school as she was used to being in a bigger group.

Both the nursery DD went to and the one DS goes to now have 3-5 'pre-school' rooms. I wasn't aware that there were nurseries that didn't TBH. It works/ed well for both of mine - DS has just moved to pre-school and his speech, gross-motor skills etc have come on leaps and bounds since moving, primarily in my view due to being with older children. (although there is one child who is a big bully, but that might turn into another thread!). They do split them into groups for some activities but more by ability/interest than age. When DD was approaching leaving nursery she loved being one of the older ones showing the new 3-year-olds around etc and being a 'buddy'. I had been concerned about boredom/repetition, but they seem to do their planning on a 2-year cycle, so children don't end up doing the same things 2 years in a row.

Ds's nursery has a Preschool room, which has max 8 kids at a time so usually has a waiting list and children leaving as they are too mature for Toddler room but can't be moved up (obviously Preschool mainly has places in Sept).
Ds was expecting to have another year in Toddlers for this reason but there was a vacancy when he was just turning 3 (Sept baby). Given Reception includes children from 4.1, if the youngest is 3.0 that's just over 1 year age gap

He was plenty mature enough 'academically' and socially, but has been very tired in evenings since moving up, as the others to start were all pushing 4 (now there's around 3-4 each day his age/size), falling asleep on the way home. Doing only 3 days a week rather than 4 helped a lot, or going in a bit later, but I did resort to taking him home in the pushchair again for a few months.

I think a split by activity might be more useful if there are two rooms - which might naturally keep larger boisterous kids separate from small shy ones, too. Activities over the 3 years I've used the nursery have been pretty varied so I'm not worried about boredom.