Thinking about my son's experience, it's clear actually that there were several things that contributed to its working that might not be true elsewhere. He started nursery as a crawler and stayed with age peers all the way through. I certainly don't recognise a scenario in which his play was limited by what was made available. Toys and books were rotated by the staff (and there was also a city toy library in use I think) and the staff would pick things having the individual children in their groups in mind. (And they did notice, even the surprising stuff like his reading at 2. It probably helps that UK regulations demand much higher staff:child ratios than IIUC US ones do: 1:2, 1:3 (0-2yo), 1:6 (3-4yo), 1:10 (4-5yo) or something like that.) In any case, I think a lot of his play wasn't dependent on using toys as toys! There was a big garden with play equipment, a tree house etc., which they spent a lot of time in, and that allowed children of different ages to mix. Also, it was run by the university where I work and a high proportion of the children there were children of its staff; we've only kept in touch with a couple, but of those one is clearly HG+ I'd say. So, yeah, our good experience might not be a good guide. Still, I think DS learned a lot that he wouldn't have learned by interacting only with older children. It's very helpful now that he does get on well with age peers (as well as older children), and I think his early experience may well have been important for that.
