He spent a week at a daycare with mixed kids ages and really liked it - while his regular sitter was on vacation.
My kids all went to an in-home daycare. It's been a great experience for them. The woman who runs it is absolutely wonderful, and the stability that you get from in-home care is great. One big benefit is that it's a good bridge to school: things have to be structured sometimes (e.g. lunchtime, taking turns for something), but (in our case at least) the kids get to decide if they want to do arts and crafts or just go play. Everyone does a structured activity at least sometimes and so they learn about working in a group.
Oh, DS9 still insists on going to this daycare place at Christmas and for 2-3 weeks in the summer. Tellingly about its quality, there are a lot of kids from his preschool time who also go.
As a general point, a great way to assess the quality of a daycare place/preschool is to find out how many kids started very young and stay on. A lot of churn in the group can mean that the quality is only so-so.
As a test, we've been lying about his age for some groups that do not require proof of age and he fits right in.
We've lied about DD4's age this summer so she could go to day camp (you have to be 5). She's tall, mature, reads better than the 5-year-olds and has even lost a tooth. I can't imagine anyone questioning her age. The experience has been a huge success for her, and has been wonderful for helping her develop independence.
And how would we notice early that he was not fitting in?
It's mostly been pretty obvious with our kids. WHen they make recurrent complaints about other kids, we know something isn't right. These are usually along the lines of "I don't want to have to play with him again because...." These types of complaints aren't the normal stuff where my kids report arguments here and there. They're consistently negative.
If my kids complain about what they do during the day, we know the fit might not be good. Alternatively, when they come home all enthusiastic and showing off their work/art projects/leaf collection/whatever and asking when they get to go back, we know that the situation is a good fit. This idea applies equally to school, day camp, day care, etc.
I didn't re-enroll then-DS6 in the soccer league because I got disgusted with the behavior of the parents on the sidelines. The soccer league got fed up too and started putting up signs saying "Please don't yell during games." Some of the kids would come off the field crying after a game. I decided the environment was unhealthy.
Hope that helps.
Val
