Total freeplay at SIL's nursery/pre-school. what ???

[Oblomov]

Is this right. Have I missed something. Went to see my lovely sil at weekens. she has 2 children , like us, hers are 6 and 4. ours are 6 and 1.5
she tells me that her niece who is due to start school in sept, does total freeplay at nursery. it is a free place that she started mornings and now is at pm aswell.
if she wants to do painting and only painting whilst she is there, she can.

apparently it is the new government initiative. and all the parents think it is silly. it wasn't like this last year, said my sil.
and not for her ds. who was allowed to choose, but also had a much more structured day:
first sing time, then playdo, then you have a cjhoice between stickle bricks or home corner etc tec.
then he was incourage dto do some things that he maybe wasn't so keen on. gently encoursged ' now its time for ....' which is good, becasue they then discovered that he had very poor finger muscles and they encouraged him to use playdoh - which he didn't wnat to, but when he got to school, his pencil writing skills were better thaan they would ahve previously been.

so I thinking, gosh this is news to me. thats not what i want for ds2. who is 1.5 and has been going to a private nursery for a few months now.

not to worry says sil, hopefully it will change next year.

from ds2's nursery sheet, he gets outside play, potato printing, musical toys, books, pushalong toys.
so def a variety.

but are the private nurseries not allowed a timetable / structured day now ?
is it free-for-all everywhere ? becasue i don't want that !

thanks goodness its her last year says sil, and that she will get structure when she starts school. but shouldn't she be getting structure now ?
and what about my ds2 ?

I think that the nursery you are talking about has misinterpreted the guidance re free play. Yes, you can't force a child to do something else, but my understanding is you can encourage them to access all areas of the curriculum.

I agree that 'free play' in some nurseries is an excuse for staff not to bother. Seen plenty of that first hand.
Free play doesn't mean no structure. You should still have set times for things, they're just not compulsory. A routine might go:
9:45-10:15 Snack is offered.
10:15-10:30 Singing time.
10:30-11:30 Staff directed activity(craft, pre-writing skills etc)
11:45-12:00 Story time.
But those things are offered. If a child doesn't want to do one of the things, don't make them. They will still be learning all the same things in a different way.

It's unlikely that your DN will do nothing but paint. They will tire of it eventually when they feel they're not learning from it, or in other words, bored.
The nursery could always "Forget" to mix paint up one day to force her to try other things.
You also need to remember that she is learning all the time. Not just in nursery. We often hear very interesting words they learn at home.. If she does loads of jigsaws at home, she might not feel the need to do nursery ones. I find that children often don't get to do the extra messy stuff at home so it tends to be the most popular bit of nursery.

There is free play and free play. DD1 goes to 2 different places and their interpretation of free play is very different. One has circle time and organised activities but if they don't want to join in and do something else instead then that is fine. She loves it here.

The other one is just a free for all with children running and around and very little order. She leaves here in a coule of weeks and she feels overwhelmed by it and finds it hard to get to know the other children.

Free lay should be carefully co-ordinated so that there are things on offer for all children, and they should be encouraged to do other things. We have some structure to our day and some free-play, but free play doesn't = Free for all. It is our job to make sure that the children are engaging in something, and where painting is concerned they have to take turns, so one child couldn't monopolise it. In the case of that child we might offer the craft activity as a way of extending her play.
There HAS to be an element of uniformity to the day (routine), but free play just mean the children explore their surroundings without adults imposing their ideas ALL THE TIME... Again, we usually direct this through topic based stuff that channels their energies, and hopefully means they are not running round like headless chickens. Children who do are supported in their play by an adult to enable them to engage.