My son attending two preschool when he was 2-3 yrs old (actually still attending now).
One of the mommy and me class has lots of art works to play with, a very fun circle time with many dances and include many things to learn in the songs, e.g. opposites, phonics. He loves it so much, it is play based but with lots of new things to do and learn.
Another preschool is a play-based, with 1 art work and 1 songs for circle time and story time. Other times are free play, 1 hr indoor and 1 hr outdoor, other kids like it so much and same as you, the teachers are very nice. But my son is so boring that, the art is too easy for him that during the first 1hr free play time, he keep on doing the same art many time, and of course in his own way to make it more fun. For the outdoor playtime, he just keep writing his numbers, not involved with other kids at all.
As I go to both school with him, I now understand that a free play school is not for him, although I always think that free play school is good for kids. Now I understand that I should search a good fit preschool for him. Finally find a warm Christian school which use Montessori materials in classroom for him in the coming fall, hope it is a good fit for him.
May be you could try to visit other preschool and see which one ur daughter likes, I think she can tell u about it.
(my son told me he doesn't like the teacher, or doesn't like the toys there when I go to visit some preschool...)
DD has been in a play based kindy, it turns out the problem is that she is craving adult or peer companionship and as such was getting bored when the poor teachers couldn't spend all day with her. She just is no good at entertaining herself for long periods of time. I also attended playcentre with her which is parent run kindy here in NZ, to be honest it required a lot of time from me and it became an expectation that I spent more and more time with other children which just wasn't the reason I was there.
At this stage I have withdrawn her from kindy and now that she has been off for 3 weeks she is back to her old self. We just completed testing so once the results come back in 2 weeks I'll make a decision what to do. We have found a Montessori that has a very high teacher/child ratio - my only concern is that if she is just going to focus on her interests she is going to top out the learning material very quickly.....
Anyway now that she is happy I'm not too stressed, but I have to be honest, with a toddler at home I'm kind of looking forward to having a few hours here and there break.
I have also enrolled her in small poppies, they took her without assessment so that was great - she has been a ball of confidence ever since!
