OP, if you contact the site admin, he can change your screen name.
I've been trying to respond without making it all about our frustration with preschool. To make a long story short, for our DD who is 4 months older than your DD, we are looking for a 100% play-based preschool.
We don't discourage academics at home but we prefer that at least at preschool, she is running around with other children, doing crafts with glitter and paint, and digging in the sandbox.
What we are focusing on teaching to DD is perseverance and I find that extra curricular activities that DD can't learn naturally through osmosis provide best learning opportunities for that. She has to pay attention to her teacher's instruction doing ballet and try her best to keep up with her class since she is grouped with precocious four to five year olds.
As far as academics go, I consider DD an unschooler and we plan on letting her be one until she is at least 5. Every time I get a bit involved and DD can sense that she is being pushed into one direction or another, she loses interest so I have learned to let her be but each child is so different on this regard.
We've also looked into Montessori schools and while I thought at least one of them would have been a good fit for DD, her father thought it played too much into her strength. For other families on this forum though, I think Montessori worked out well for their children during preschool years. I had a lot of prejudice against Montessori prior to becoming a mom but now that I have a child who is very much a Montessori child, I am glad that we have Montessori schools as an option.
