The poll on how long you spend on preschool had me thinking...

I know its easy to include younger ones (18-24m) in the preschool activities when you are already doing them with the older kids, but if your ENTIRE group was under 3 would you still do the same preschool activities??? What age is the "ideal" age to start that type of program??

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Here a child is considered preschool age at 2 yrs.

I do preschool stuff and have an open invite for anyone wishing to participate. This includes all ages.

If I was infant/toddler care only, I would probably just play all day but make sure I embedded "learning" into that play time as much as possible without overloading them....kwim?

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That's exactly what I do and what I would do (but I don't have any infants or toddlers nor will I be taking on any).

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I really feel it out for each child. I've always done preschool activities for the older ones and then any younger children (under 3) are free to join in, which they usually do for at least a short amount of time. I've noticed most young ones really only grasp very elementary concepts and it's not until they are between 3 1/2 to 4 years old when they really start absorbing things I'm teaching. When I first started preschool activities, I would really frustrate myself trying to get the under 3 crowd to engage, remember things and participate when I realize now it was beyond their own personal grasp. Out of nowhere, they started picking up everything I taught like a sponge, but usually at all different ages and levels. That is why I start encouraging at least some limited participation in preschool activities around the age of 2 or 2 1/2.

By age 3, most of my group knows their colors, basic shapes, the alphabet song, counting to 20 (mostly), rote counting 5-10 objects, and can identify approximately 1/2 to 3/4 of the uppercase alphabet and 1/3-1/2 of the lowercase alphabet.

By age 4, I've found most of my group can do all of the above plus identification of most of the alphabet letters (upper and lower case), some simple phonics, very simplified addition and subtraction, tracing and some very archaic letter/number writing, simple science concepts and simple social studies.

Between ages 4 and 5, the children started grasping more complex literacy (phonics, sequencing, recognizing rhyming), writing letters and numbers, mathematics (simple addition and subtraction), science concepts and social studies until between 4 and 5.

I use a combination of play-based learning (90% of what I do) and some age/skill-appropriate worksheets/dry-erase activities.

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At the FCC I used to work at she required that they were at least beginning potty training before actively considering them a 'preschooler' but since she had the infants sleep during that hour of preschool once they grew out nap time they can sit with the group during preschool as long as they aren't disruptive to the other children, she would let children as young as 18 months sit in. If they were then she would have another assistant watch them in the play room (she usually tried to avoid this because the play room is next to one of the napping rooms and also so her assistants could do other work that needed to be done).

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We have a large license, which is 12 children with 2 adults. One adult is in charge of 0-18/20 months and the other is in charge of the 18/20m + kids. Weave a seperate room for the 0-18m babies & toddlers. Once they move up to the big kids, we have a preschool schedule. The younger ones wander around, and I don't expect them to stay seated while we do circle time. I let them slowly acclimate to our schedule and participation.

That being said typically we move them out of the baby/toddler room when they are 18-20 months. The conditions are that they can sit for small amounts of time without distracting the other kids, can sleep on a mat, and have a regular nap schedule. So very dependent, the earliest I have included a child is 17 months and the latest was 24 months.

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