DS is 3.7 and currently goes to nursery two mornings a week and preschool for two sessions a week. He's been going to nursery since he was 2 1/2 and I put him in there really for his own social benefit. He loves going to both.
Yesterday the head of the preschool asked if we would like 5 morning sessions at preschool from September as this is the norm and obviously this will be DS' year before he goes to school. Now I can't decide whether I should take him out of the nursery that he loves and put him into preschool 5 mornings a week, or have 3 mornings at preschool and keep up the two nursery sessions as well. My thoughts on this so far have been that:
If he goes to preschool five mornings a week this will be good for him in that he'll be going to the same place every morning and this will be a good experience for when he starts school. Also all his other friends will go to preschool 5 mornings a week so if he's not there all the time he may get left out a bit? On the plus side for nursery he's there for 4 hours and there's a lot more free play as well as structured activities, so they get to go out in the garden etc and play a lot there. On the downside for nursery, they've recently had a staff shortage and there have been a lot of agency staff in which they tend to put in with the older kids as the younger kids benefit more from familiarity, but this has been very unsettling for a lot of the older kids.
My head is telling me that the best thing to do is to take him out of nursery and go with the 5 sessions at preschool, but my heart tells me that he'll be sad to leave his little friends. Mother suggested that I could take the sessions at preschool and put ds into nursery for two afternoon sessions instead, but I don't really think that once he's been to preschool in the morning he'll be that keen to go to nursery again in the afternoon. Any experience/opinions welcome.