Hello,
I feel a bit embarrassed writing this. Due to us having lived abroad a lot over the last few years, my son has been to 4 nurseries. Has never had any problem settling and has been fine every time he has changed and settled either instantly or in a few days. Phew., very lucky.
I can't help but compare all the nurseries to the one he was in in Spain, which was just amazing. We are trying to keep up his Spanish now that we are in London, and there are two bilingual nurseries where we live. He attends one of them.
My problems with this nursery:
- I spent 40 minutes with him on his settling in day, and didn't hear much Spanish. This is really disappointing to me.
- They don't nap, they have quiet time, so he doesn't always nap there. It makes evenings much more difficult.
- It's not very close.
- They are a mixed age nursery so they'll all be together if he stays on for pre-school. I don't know if this is a good thing or not.
The food seems really good, they send lots of photos on whatsapp. I wasn't too keen on this at first because I would prefer them to be spending the time with the children. But it brightens my day to see them. They seem to do some nice activities and the outside space is nice.
The other nursery, also bilingual, is from what I can gather, more Spanish focused, and the staff only (or mostly) use Spanish. They rarely put updates on Tapestry. My friend said once every 10 days or so. She said it's hard to know what they do there and there is more free play rather than a structured activity every day. When she picks up her daughter, she's just playing in the garden. The outside space is small. The food is fine. It's also not very close to us. They have a separate pre-school room/area once they are 3. Once he is 3 and the funded hours kick in, this one might make more sense as it stretches the funded hours across the whole year. The other one only lets you use the hours for term time only. One of us is a teacher so we only use the nursery for term time, and we'd be paying loads in the holidays at the other one when we aren't using it! I think that's how it works?
I don't know what to do. I'm wondering whether to change him to the other one. I just feel so bad doing that again even though he is the most adaptable kid in the world it seems. Thank you if you have read this far. Hoping someone who has been through nursery/preschool can let me know what the best thing to do even financially would be.
Thank you.