Splitting pre-school between 2 venues

[loveisagirlnameddaisy]

My daughter is eligible for her 15 hours funding in Jan 2013. I've been putting her name down at a few preschools and they have said that they can't guarantee offering her a place for the full 15 hours, but will know nearer the time. If that were to happen, I was told I can split the 15 hours across two preschools.

Has anyone got experience of sending their child to two (or more) preschools to take advantage of the full 15 hours? Do you think this is unsettling?

DS coped just fine with it. We moved house after he had done 1 term of 9 hours a week at preschool A, so we added 3 hours a week at ( newly local) preschool B as that was all they could offer us . In time it changed to 6 at A (now 20 miles away but handy for work one day a week) and 9 at B .

We split the 15 hours funding between nurseries when my DS was younger.

We'd moved house and the new nursery couldn't accomodate him for the full 4 days we needed so we started off with 1 day there & 3 at the old one and gradually increased it as space became available. We were lucky that the old one was still within a sensible driving distance.

My DS didn't have any problems with splitting his time between the 2. He was 2 at the time and he split the time until he was nearly 4. They were both quite different places - one big with loads of children and the other a small family run place where more time was spent outside.

opps- you asked was it unsettling.
No I don't think so, teh two settings were very different. One had a garden and lots of outdoor toys , the other had no outdoor space at all, but worked a 15 min exercise slot into their daily timetable. One was more "school like" the other more playgroup like. One did walks to a farm, celebrated easter and did a nativity play, the other had a more ethnically mixed group of kids with multiple mother tongues and home cultures, never did any outings and made things to mark assorted festivals. One spotted that DS had a speech delay, the other didn't.

DS enjoyed different things at the two different settings, he learnt different things too. I'm quite happy that he had the two different experiences concurrently.

DD goes to two different pre schools..one for 6 hours and one for 9. She copes perfectly and they are very different!!