lafayette pre-k

[Anonymous]

We're trying to decide whether to keep our dd in her play-based nursery school another year and then send her to kindergarten, or do pre-k first.

My questions: before looking at it, I was nervous about the whole open space thing. Now that I've seen it, I'm not as worried -- but it was so quiet. How do they keep 4 year olds so quiet and still? It seemed odd to me.

The principal talked about there were two periods during the day where the kids had free choice, including the messier stuff, like painting, in the middle of the space. How does it work with 80 kids running around?

For those of you with older kids, how important was doing pre-k to the transition? Would we be okay going straight to kindergarten the following year?

[Anonymous]

It's not always quiet! I've never seen all the kids doing free choice at once - I've seen a couple of classes share the space and it works pretty well through the use of stations. I did the pre-K thing once and the straight-to-Kindergarten thing twice and it was definitely an easier transition for pre-K child, but it wasn't that big of a deal for the other 2. I made the decision based upon hours of school day, ease of having all in one place, etc. My pre-K kid loved it, but - in all honesty - I liked his nursery school better. OTOH, since *he* was perfectly happy in pre-K, thrived, and learned a lot, it really didn't matter what I liked better. No regrets at all.