Hello!

Hi everyone, Our child is at daycare full time and is three. The childcare offers kindy there as well and I wondered how many of you stay with childcare until prep school or use the prep schools kindy? I’m from Europe so are very confused with the terminology over here and when the kids start school etc! Any advice would help immensely, thanks!


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  • Hello, i can relate, as I’m from the UK and struggled to get my head around the terminologies and age cut offs used here! I have a 5 year old who was 5 after the cut off date in South Australia, and twin boys of 34 who were all in the same childcare facility. This has a kindy room and I kept my daughter there rather than start her in a nearby school that did mid year admissions. It cost me more but I figured since i was having to go to childcare to do drop offs and collections for her brothers, i might as well keep them all together, rather than do different location drop offs before I had to. (I dont have a car.)
    I get the comment about if you have the option to move them to the school’s pre school /kindy class, it gets them used to meeting their peers early, and ready for that building etc, however for me the strongest argument would be if it is cheaper.
    My daughter has now started Reception at school, which has OSHC, so I have to do 2 different location drop offs each morning and evening, as the school doesnt have a kindy program supported by childcare afterwards. At some point they have to leave old friends and make new ones, so if kids are happy where they are, why change things before you have to?


  • Kindy is cheaper that’s my choice


  • I think the continuity of staying at the same kindy is beneficial. And although this shouldn’t be the determining factor, the longer hours at the kindy allow some flexibility (but that is just delaying the school hours next year)


  • You could stay as she is already familiar!


  • My daughter started pre-school at age four and it helped her make the transition to kindergarten.


  • My grandson is making this transition. I’ll be keeping an eye on this thread to see how others have done


  • We stayed with child care until our children started pre-school (prep) at 4 years. I’m not sure it really matters; if both are at the same site and the same organisation then your child is probably getting the same level of care and education.


  • There is a kinder that is just kinder school not attached to either. That’s usually what most do


  • We just used 4 year old kinder, the year before they started school.
    It’s up to you though on which way you would like to go


  • My kids went to Child Care until they started school. Our school had a transition to school program that started mid way through the year where the kids would go for a couple of hours one day a fortnight and visit different parts of the school such as Library, canteen etc and experienced different aspects of school. This worked a treat for our kids.


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