Mixed aged rooms - good or bad?

[Allegrogirl]

I have just been informed by the DDs nursery that they are moving to another building (they are a private company but provide the nursery for the hospital I work at) as the site they are on is being redeveloped.

It is quite a large nursery with a baby room, one to twos, toddlers, rising threes and preschool. I have raised my concerns about the size of the preschool as there are over 40 children at a time, and not the same ones every day. There are plenty of staff and activities but it does seem a bit crazy in there. DD1 is happy enough but she isn't really learning anything as there are so many distractions.

The set up on the new site will be several rooms of either 0-2 years, or 2-5 years. It's being sold to the parents on the basis of smaller 'family' type groups with only one room change throughout the childs time at the nursery.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I like the current set up, apart from thinking that preschool should be subdivided. One work colleague has suggested that a mix of ages is beneficial, at least in infant school children so mabe this is their thinking? But another person has suggested they are doing this so they don't require as many staff as their ratios can change with the age mix.

DD1 is leaving for school soon so it won't affect her but DD2 is 20 month so has a while to go. Please can you share your experience and opinions of this.

In theory a mix of ages has some benefits.

In practice...
I've worked in rooms that go from 2 until school. All the toys have to be suitable for the 2 year olds. Have a look round a toy shop and check the ages on the toys. Unless it's big and chunky like you would be happy giving a baby, it'll say "Not suitable for children under 3". I wonder if the nursery has re-risk assessed their equipment? Are they aware of the issue? Lego is out for a start! They'll go through a lot of paper books too.

The 2-5 year old room I was in had what the bigger children thought of as "Baby toys" which were thought of as boring by the big ones. As a result, they got creative and used the toys for anything but their intended purpose, which got them told off, or they got disruptive because there was no challenge.

Many nursery staff would disagree with me, but I would always say avoid nurseries which mix 2 to 5 year olds.

We removed DS1 from a nursery because of this. He moved into the pre school room at 2.2 yrs. In the course of a few weeks he started crying about going to nursery and he had loads of accidents from trying to copy the older ones. He also ended up not eating properly as the kids were expected to serve and feed themselves. some of the toys were not suitable for his age and he was picked on by a boy 2yrs older.
We moved him to another nursery with a 2-3 room and he thrived.

Thank you Tiggy and Therein. You've both confirmed my gut feeling.

I'm going to put together some questions for the nursery and also start thinking about an alternative.

It's a shame because overall we have been very pleased with the care and the staff are lovely. There is a very low staff turnover. It's convenient as well being next to work and I'm in the salary sacrifice scheme.

Having been negative in my last post, a friends DC went to a nursery with a 2-5 room, and they were happy. It worked because within a large room the children were separated into smaller groups, and then there was a timetable of activities which the kids did within their groups, plus 'free flow' time where they mixed.

If you like and trust the staff, and the nursery have though through the potential problems of a wide age range, it might be worth a trial of a month?

thought through

Really glad I've seen this post as I was thinking the exact same thing about a nursery I took my dd to today. It was lovely but she (a tall 18 month old) looked tiny compared to some of the kids in there & there didn't really seem to be enough space for range of ages.

My DS's nursery was like this - only 2 rooms (one for babies and one for 2-5s), and it worked brilliantly. My DS ended up being the oldest at one point (as he didn't go to reception in school but straight into Year 1). The age range worked really well - the children would often be separated by age in the playground area (taking out the younger ones for a while and then the older ones) but then inside it was often mixed together. The older ones got to have more responsibililty - putting out cups and spoons etc for lunch/snacks etc. The staff seemed to find it really easy to separate out the tasks. Lego wasn't there - but there were other similar games etc. TBH it hadn't occurred to me that nurseries would be split down further. Good luck with whatever you choose.

So long as it is small groups (12-16 say, rather than 24) I think it is great. It seems common in countries that have excellent early years provision like Sweden and Germany to have mixed age groups.

It won't save them on staff, they might even have to have more staff, as the 2 year olds will still have to be in a 1:4 ratio even if the 4 year olds are 1:8.

It's nice to here a couple of positive views from kw13 and Rubirosa. I've never heard of nurseries mixing ages in one room and it hasn't been communicated well to the parents. Some parents got a letter, some read a brief couple of lines about it in the monthly newsletter and some hadn't heard about it at all.

I have now read in the Trust weekly e-mail a bit more about it. We will get a chance to view the new building before it opens etc. It will have a wooded area outside which sounds great.

We went to a family theme park yesterday for a friends birthday and DD2 was in her element with a big group of 3-6 year olds so I really don't know why I worry.

I'll have a word with the nursery about their poor communication (not for the first time) and ask some questions based on some of the comments above.