After talking to some friends with kids the same age as Alexzander I've come to realise that there aren't many actual Pre Schools around. Most of them are child care centres, day care or early learning centres. An actual pre school (from waht my sister tells me, she's a preschool teacher) has a structured program with specific outcomes for each term. For example, listed in the info pack we got are the following developmental areas they work on:

1) Gross Motor Development
2) Social Emotional Development
3) Fine Motor Development
4) Intellectual Development
5) Language Development
6) Creative Artistic Devleopment

Then within these are examples of what they do. So for gross motor they learn climbing, balancing, throwing & catching. Then for intellectual they have things like learning smaller/bigger, tall/short and learning about the environment (my sister taught about "under the sea" last term.

The kids must be 2 years 6 months to go to the preschool & preference is given to 3-5 year olds. All children must be toilet trained by the time they are three (though they accept pull-ups on younger ones). There are two classes, one for 3-4 year olds and one for 4-5 years olds that are going to school the next year.

The day is very structured and set out like a school day.

9.00 .......... Outdoor Free Play
10.00 ......... Group Time (stories, picture talks, finger plays, poems, discussions)
10.45 ......... Little Lunch
11.00 ......... Puzzles
11.20 ......... Outdoor Play / Games
12.15 ......... Music / Games / Story
12.30 ......... Big Lunch
1.00 .......... Indoor Activities
2.15 .......... Pack Up Indoor
2.30 .......... Pack Belongings / Singing
2.50 .......... Home

So what does everyone else's preschools or kinders do? Is this sort of thing as unusual as it seems to be? No-one I know has heard of anything quite so structured for before school....