I just pulled my son about a month ago for Head Start - which is a preschool program for lower income. They arrived at 8:00 (had breakfast) had carpet time with was singing & reading a book till almost 9:00. Then they had "class" time with was more like play/art time and stopped "class" time around 10:00/10:30 to set up lunch and lunch started around 10:45 to pick-up time at 11:15.
My son started when he was 3 - last year... he did make progress last year, but didn't seem to make any progress this year... I got tired of it and decided to teach him at home. Before I did I talked to a few of the teachers at the school he will be going to next year for Kindergarten, found out what they needed to know & what I should be working on. I only work with him one on one for about 1 - 1.5 hrs a day, but he has make a lot of progress in just a little over a month!
We ues letter, number & picture magnets, chaulk & chaulk boards, read books, have a homemade notebook w/ letters, numbers, shapes & colors in it. He is starting to sound out letters & putting them together and can read a few works. His favorite game to play is one we do with magnets... I get out the farm magnets (pictures of different animals) and the letter magnets - then I use the letters to write out the animals (like cat, dog, chicks, cow) he has to sound out the letters and figure out with animal goes with the word - then he puts it next to the word. It is a game, but he is learning. But we also sit down and do atleast 30-45 min of paper work... or what our school calls "bell work" as in writing letters & numbers, counting, matching capital letters with lowercase, same/different, reading, finding items that start with a letter or finding a letter in a sentace.
Maybe regular preschools are different then Head Start... but the last year has put a sour tast in my mouth as to preschool. I am not sending my now 22 mo or 6 mo old to preschool - as long as I am still a SAHM I will teach them myself.