Originally Posted by bbo:
you are in a center, right?
Your center doesn't have any accomidations for children who no longer nap?
I would think there may be a few in a center. 
In WI, children who don't fall asleep after 1/2 hour (presumably those 4 year olds), are to be offered quiet activities. I would suggest a quiet room with lights low for non-nappers. If she is the only one, have her lay down "until the big hand is on the x and the little hand is one the x", and then take her in the other room and give her some quiet activities, her "work". If she talks to you...say "it's quiet time, I have my work to do, and you have yours,. It's not talking time". Build a sense of camraderie vs. antagonsim.
sleeping is like "you can lead a horse to water..." You can make them stay in bed/on their mat, but you cant MAKE them sleep.
As for the post-nap grumpiness because she didn't get a nap, I am fairly certain that all the fighting about napping in the first place probably adds to it. If you can get something worked out, you may find that she is a lot more pleasant in the pm.
Thanks for the reply. I'm actually at a home daycare (but in a seperate building from the owner's actual house). I agree that it would be good to let her up by a certain time, but I can't. She WILL NOT be quiet enough for that. And the minute she is reminded that, "we need to be quiet", she gets LOUDER, and even if she doesn't throw a fit, she purposely makes a lot of noise becasue she's bored playing alone and wants the others to wake up so she can play with them. She is VERY smart. Plus it'd be like rewarding her, and the others would find out and then it'd be the end of nap time for everyone. There's no way 3-5 year olds are going to allow themselves to go to sleep if they think someone else gets to get up and play. (we've experienced this in the summers with School agers. At one time we let them get up after the younger ones went to sleep, but even if they were quiet and didn't wake anyone up, which was RARE, the younger ones soon learned that the SA got to get up, so most of them would make themselves stay awake, and even if we didn't let them up, they just wouldn't go to sleep, and of course they'd get bored and want to get up, ask every 2 seconds when they could get up...make a lot of noise themselves then. And then it would be a fun afternoon for everyone ~sarcasm~ because everyone was tired from no nap). So letting her up would just create even more problems. Besides everything else I mentioned, I wouldn't be able to get anything done. Nap is when we have to do most of the cleaning, lunch clean up, sweeping, activity planning, etc. Plus it's my only chance to potty during the day lol. And if I leave her alone for a second, she immediately goes around to the other children trying to wake them up, banging toys to make enough noise to wake them, pounds on the bathroom door yelling that she has to potty, etc etc. There's only one of us at nap time after the majority goes to sleep.