Day care and kindergarten

Hey guys, I moved here last month from the UK and I just want some honest opinions about day care and kindergarten. Based on the research I've done about both, is kindergarten more academic and less play based than day care? I'm just a bit torn between keeping my son in day care longer or get him into kindergarten at the junior stage when he's 4? He'll be 3 in January and has never been in day care/nursery. He's really smart so I'm not concerned about the learning being super structured. I really want him to thrive socially and enjoy his time away from me. If I enroll him in just the senior kindergarten would he be missing out from the junior year? I don't know if it's normal to just do one year of kindergarten 😅

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I don't have personal experience but I have researched early learning and child care for work. There is an ECE Report for Canada and about 90% of 4 year olds in Ontario do junior kindergarten. But I think whatever you do will be fine! If you do a pre-K type program through a daycare / Montessori then you can get a better teacher-student ratio, but it doesn't sound like your son needs that. In terms of choosing pre-K, the nice thing about your son being born in January is that he would be one of the oldest kids in his class and you get a bit more time with him! Can't speak to the differences between the programs in detail. Daycare also has a curriculum and pre-K is also play based so I wouldn't think it would be a huge gulf, but again I don't have personal experience yet. And to make it more complicated Ontario announced some curriculum changes this year that affect kindergarten (but I'm not sure if they affect pre-K).

Thank you so much for replying. It's so hard to know what the best thing to do is. He's starting day care in October. It's full time but I'm going to request 3 days and see what they say. I don't mind paying for full time but he's thriving without daycare and the day care doesn't do any activities out of the centre and when I went for a tour they didn't really go into much detail about the activities they do. There are good reviews but I want to be able to take him to do a variety of stuff which daycare can't offer.

Kinder teacher and new Mama here! I just joined the group so am a little late on the reply to your Q but wanted to add: if I could delay putting my son into Kinder for any time frame, I would. In an ideal world, I’d have him do a nature school daycare/early learning centre for the extra time before transitioning to a school-based Kinder. Kids THRIVE when they have more time for play, especially hands-on, open-ended exploration. Most Kinder programs SHOULD follow that model, but not all teachers do. Whatever you decide/have decided, I’d make sure it’s truly child-driven and play-based :)

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