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[Yokie Kuma]

For those of you with children and those of you who teach children ...

What age did they first go to pre-school?

Why?

[latefordinner]

My daughter is 4, she started at a pre-school this year. Mostly to get her out and playing with other kids, but also to give my wife a break so she can get back into the workforce.

[LaowaiSaosao]

My 6 year old was in daycare (nursery in UK English) from when he was seven months old as I had to go back to work, but he started pre-school (as in, semi-formal education, kind of preparation for school) the term after he turned 3 as this is the set-up in the UK. He should then have started school the term after he turned 4 but didn't as we were moving to China within a few months so I didn't see the point and kept him in pre-school for another term.

My second son, who will be three next month, started going to kindergarten last week as there are no kids his age for him to play with around here, seems like all Chinese children his age have already started in kindergarten. He very much needs the socialization side of it and if he learns some thing along the way, even better.

[The Local Dialect]

We plan on starting our son next year. He'll be about a month shy of his 3rd birthday when the 2010 school year starts, so he'll be a bit young, but I think he's going to need some social interaction here soon and he's just not getting it at home with DH or even out about in the neighborhood.

We haven't chosen a kindy/preschool yet, but we're looking into it. My school has a kindergarten attached to it and we might go with that since I'd get a teacher's discount. Where we live the bilingual (shoot, even monolingual) education options are really expensive so that'll probably limit our options quite a bit.

[AMonk]

My grandmother and her (older) sister babysat my son until he was 4.  Then I put him into a (government-run) PreSchool for one year.  He started Kindergarten at age 5.  Perfectly normal for

[Yokie Kuma]

Thanks everyone .... it's especially harder to decide while living in China .... adds an extra dimension of International School vs Local School and the $$$!!!

[Lotus Eater]

Mine started kindy when they were 3 - it was a 2 mornings a week thing.  Pre-school was at 4 for 5 mornings a week.

What do you want your child to get out of it?  I wanted socialisation for my children - friends, fun, toys and stuff I didn't have, and also getting used to listening to another adult, being in a group instead of having personal attention.  I wasn't worried about educational stuff as my ex and I were both teachers and could cover what we figured was needed at that age.

If you are planning on staying in China for a while, a local one might be good for teaching Chinese naturally - your little ones will pick it up very quickly from the others.

[Noodles]

a local one might be good for teaching Chinese naturally - your little ones will pick it up very quickly from the others.

Not sure i'd agree with that, i think kids growing up here, whatever school they go to will speak Chinese more naturally. It is the English that needs work. This is just my observations of the kids living around where i am, and there are a lot of foreign kids here.
Personally i think 4 is suitable age although -

Mine started kindy when they were 3 - it was a 2 mornings a week thing.

is probably a pretty good thing and will probably do something like this when the time comes, which is getting closer all the time.

[The Local Dialect]

a local one might be good for teaching Chinese naturally - your little ones will pick it up very quickly from the others.

Not sure i'd agree with that, i think kids growing up here, whatever school they go to will speak Chinese more naturally. It is the English that needs work. This is just my observations of the kids living around where i am, and there are a lot of foreign kids here.
Personally i think 4 is suitable age although -

Mine started kindy when they were 3 - it was a 2 mornings a week thing.

is probably a pretty good thing and will probably do something like this when the time comes, which is getting closer all the time.

This is definitely true for my son as well, his English is not nearly as strong as his Chinese, and it is a theory that tends to hold up in research regarding biligual/bicultural kids.

It tends to be a phenomenon with bilingual kids from multicultural families that the strongest language will usually be what is called the "majority language," that is, the language that is used primarily in the country where you live. The "minority language," will eventually be weaker, even though it may start off stronger for the first few years before the kid starts school and starts interacting with people outside the home. As the child grows older, he will sometimes even reject the minority language to a degree, be embarrassed to speak it in public, or even refuse to speak it altogether!

For families where one parent is Chinese and one is foreign living in China, Chinese will probably not be a problem. English (or whatever your native language is) will be the language you'd want to make sure gets reinforced either through school or playgroups.

[latefordinner]

English is definitely the weaker language where our daughter is concerned.

[Yokie Kuma]

Language was not my primary concern.  Socialization is kind of a secondary concern (I had read that poorly socialized children quickly catch up when they do start school so that is not a large issue).

I was mostly concerned with our child having access to all the resources and teachings she would need ... i.e. art and playing and 'stuff' ....

There is no set formalized "teach your child this stuff" so I do not want to miss something she might need ....

[LaowaiSaosao]

Socialization is kind of a secondary concern (I had read that poorly socialized children quickly catch up when they do start school so that is not a large issue).

That's interesting as I would have thought the socialization would be the most important part of pre-school education - I have several friends who teach 5-7 year olds and they say the kids who have been in some kind of pre-school education adapt to all the routines and structures of school really easily whereas the few who are entering education for the first time struggle quite a lot at first. They also say they couldn't care less whether kids come to them knowing their letters, being able to count etc as that is their job. So I don't think you need to worry about your daughter missing something she needs, kids are big sponges that soak up knowledge even when you aren't trying to teach them anything.

Regards all the other stuff, it's easy enough to do art, playing etc with your kids, in fact that is the fun part of having kids. My boys love baking with me - with the 6 year old it's all about weighing out ingredients and breaking eggs without getting any shell in the bowl while the 2 year old is happy to have a lump of dough, a rolling pin and a cutter, and in about 6 months time my baby will be happily occupied pulling all the pans out of the cupboard and bashing them together!

For me the most important thing that organised childcare (be it kindergarten, pre-school, whatever) can offer is interaction with other children. In my experience this becomes really important from about 2 years old as around that age they become aware of other kids and really benefit from learning to play with others.

Regards international versus local school, I think you have to judge each situation on its own merits. We have 3 sons who each have a different level of English/Chinese. Our ambition is that all three will be bilingual but we have to work within their different experiences - the oldest went to international kindergarten where the teachers could speak some English as he couldn't speak any Chinese at first, whereas our middle son is bilingual so he just started at a local kindergarten. The older son is in international school now to give him a strong grounding in English as this is his first language, although we do a lot of work on his Chinese too. Middle son will probably attend Chinese primary school, at least for the first couple of years, to give him a strong grounding in Chinese as this is pretty much his first language and it's easier for me to work with him on his English than his Chinese. But at some point we will switch them both over ie oldest son to Chinese school, middle son to international school. At least that's our tentative plan for now, provided we stay here long term (we definitely want to) and provided we can afford the school fees (which are a killer).

[Yokie Kuma]

LWSS:  thanks a heap.  Good points.  And thanks for letting me know your plans .... much better to hear what other parents are doing here than just the theory I read on the internet ....

[Con ate dog]

I'll belatedly agree with everybody.  Don't worry about academics: any advantage a young child gets over their classmates disappears rather quickly when proper school starts.  Just learning classroom etiquette and routine, and those tricky social skills, is plenty.  You can expect your child to be scared of school at first; how long this phase lasts varies.  But even half days will break them in to the lifestyle, and that advantage really does matter.

[George]

You can expect your child to be scared of school at first;

Why? If you have prepared your child properly, they should be actually looking forward to going to school.