Picking the Perfect Preschool

Choosing the right preschool for your child can be a daunting task.  This may be your child's first experience with care outside your home, and will certainly be their first school experience.  It is important to get off on the right foot.  Yet there are so many programs to choose from, and even within a school, each teacher has their own energy and classroom philosophy.  What can a parent look for to guide them towards the right school?

There are obvious issues such as safety and cleanliness, student-to-teacher ratios, travel distance and cost.  But I think that parents also need to seriously consider the way their children are taught, and perhaps take the road that is currently less traveled: a preschool curriculum that focuses on play.

Child Development in Action

I was at the park a few days ago and observed something so developmentally text-book, interesting and, frankly, cute that I can't help but recount it.  A small girl, preschool aged, was playing in the sand, and tossed it gently a few times, not more than a few inches from her hand.  Easily seeing where this was leading, her mother promptly told her not to throw the sand; two, three, four times, she warned her persistent child against it, in a tired, patient tone. Finally, the child approached her older sibling, playfully, with a handful of sand, and the mother caught her arm.  She gently but firmly insisted that no more sand was to be thrown.

This time the child listened, un-distracted, and understood that her mother was serious.  Another girl of about the same age happened past the sand box a moment later.  When the strange girl looked down at the sand, the first girl informed her, authoritatively, "You can't throw the sand."

Preschoolers, Independence and Chores

I came across this topic on the Parents Magazine website, and liked the article overall.  Many parents wait until their child is older to begin assigning chores, but this brings problems.  First, children want very badly to be helpful and grown-up at Preschool age.  Parents who wait lose their child's natural enthusiasm.  Secondly, a child who is eight or nine and suddenly being assigned chores is apt to resent it.  After all, she hasn't had to contribute through chores all her life, why should she have to begin now?

But I do have a few points to add about safety.

In the opening of the article, the author says her own 4 year-old climbed out of bed one recent morning and tried to make a frozen waffle...in a frying pan on the stove.  I'm sure this was a heart-stopping experience for the author, but it may have been possible to avoid it.