Our school is lengthening the 1st grade day

Our first grade school day has always been the same as all the other grades. I think it's a state requriement for classroom hours for grade school students.

David

Our first grade is 8:15 until 3 but you are encouraged to pick your child up at 1 at least until Christmas and you may all year if need be. The teacher's assistant usually takes the class in the afternoon. They rest, play outside and do crafts. In my son's class, some children were still being picked up at 1 in 2nd grade because they needed to be.

Our first grade goes from 8:30-3:00. For the first half of the year, after recess (from 12:55-1:20) was rest, which went from 1:20-2:00 and then free playtime from 2:00-2:35, after which they cleaned up, did their jobs, and said goodbye.

After the February winter break, we stopped doing rest. Now the kids come in from recess, and sit at their desks while the teacher reads from the current chapter book for about 15 minutes. Then they practice their flutes for 10 minutes and write/draw in their journals for 15 minutes before ending the day with playtime/jobs like before.

This is a charter school.

Ours goes 8:20 to 3:00 mon-wed, until 2:10 on Thursdays and at 12:30 Friday. They encourage you to pick them up around noon everyday the first few weeks, depending on how the child is feeling.

There is also an after care program that runs until 4 pm at an extra cost.

Our charter runs the 1st grade from 8:30-2:45, but morning lesson is the academic time, the afternoons are spent in various other lessons (handicrafts, spanish, form drawing, etc) .

Interesting difference in the UK schools is gradually doing full days.
Class (Grade) One is one afternoon, Class Two is two afternoons and so on until the full week is acheived in Class 5. There are slight variations on this amongst schools but non-class afternoons are covered by Afternoon Care by those that need this. This was still the case a few years ago anyway.
One of the things I enjoyed about my children being in WS were those afternoons when we could get together with other families and go off for picnics. I really felt that loss when the full week arrived!