Private vs public kindy vs preschool?

Preschool and daycare is the same thing really, different places have different philosophys.

I know nothing about kindys so can't answer there. Playcentre has two co-ordinators which are trained to a certain level and get paid. They may or may not have children there. Then there are three (Depends on numbers to how many really) parent helpers and between the five of them they set up the activited for the day and do learning stories for some of the children each day. Once the kids are TT they can be left there but there are always heaps of parents lurking around as the ones who aren't TT need a caregiver to stay. Every parent has to do at least course one but can go on and do more and eventually become a co ordinator if they want (its all free). Course one doesn't take long and is all quite interesting. There are monthly meetings and everything is run by the parents so you have a say in how the money is spent and everything. Parents have certain jobs (mine was to be in charge of book club) but if you have a little baby they don't expect you to do too much and you have to help clean up at the end of term. Its not as much work as a lot of people think and you can see the benefits and want to help out anyway. We used to go 2 days a week and it cost $50 (I think) a term. We had themes and things but it was mainly freeplay and child led learning. When you were on parent help you had a certain child to write a learning story and you had to read their past stories and build on that. Nowhere near as structured as preschool but the kids learn heaps.

Hope that helps a bit, I got a bit carried away

We have looked at kindy (public) and montessori (private) and there is such a huge difference between them. I didn't look at playcentre.

When I called kindys I basically got told it was indoor and outdoor play with some mat time.

Montessori has a cool cirriculum they teach, they also teach and encourage indepedance and have structured learning/time while they are there. But theres also play time too. We are going to send Daniel here once hes TT (eek lol). But its expensive.