Asking yourself “Where is a good preschool near me?” really only addresses part of the process of trying to find a place to have your kids watched and taken care of while you’re going about your work or school day.
In fact, there are a lot of other factors that you should be considering when it comes to where you’ll be sending your child to preschool. As a parent, it’s considered to be your job to make sure that your child is as well equipped for the future as possible.
When it comes to preschool, you have a lot of options. With that many options comes a lot of choices that you’ll need to make, some of them are easy choices while others are far more difficult to make as a parent.
Selecting the perfect preschool for your child takes a lot of research and thought. Fortunately enough, we’ve done a good deal of the legwork for you so you don’t have to. Over the course of this article, we’ll be looking at education-centered preschools as well as non-education-centered preschools so you can be sure that you’re making the best possible choice.
You can also do other research beyond just our article, and we even encourage it. There’s a lot to know about preschools and there is a lot of information out there.
A Headstart for Learning?
It’s safe to say that the vast majority of parents want to make sure that their children are successful. The job market is competitive and it’s entirely possible that by the time they enter the market there will be all sorts of jobs that didn’t exist at the time we wrote this article.
That’s just kind of the nature of technology. It improves exponentially faster, and with that kind of booming growth of course things are going to change quickly and there will be an ever-shifting need for different skills.
Whether your child is going to be an ophthalmologist, high school history teacher, a master plumber, or an online marketer, there’s a good chance that they’re going to need to go to some sort of higher education.
Sometimes that’s college, sometimes it’s some sort of trade school. Regardless of where they end up going, they’re going to need to be able to excel in a classroom setting. In fact, most things in life require for people to be able to navigate a class properly.
That’s where education-centered preschool programs come in. When you enroll your child into a program that is centered around education, you can be sure that they’re getting a headstart on the things that they need to learn before they have to know them, and that makes a difference.
The big problem here is that when children enter into kindergarten without an education-centered program, they have to get used to the structure of academia while also learning the basics of language and math at the very least.
Preschools that are centered around education make it a point to make sure that your child already has the groundwork laid out for them, which makes it easier for them to acclimate to the classes that they’ll be needing to take both in the near and distant future.
These kinds of preschools have certain methods that they use in order to make sure that your child is learning as much as possible, and there are so many that we’re going to have to give it its own section to make sure we don’t miss any important details.
How Education-Centered Preschools Help Your Child Learn
Learning is tough, even for kids. Information retention is something that’s incredibly difficult for us to do, and there are many scientists that do a lot of work to find out how we can best make sure that humans can retain as much information as possible.
Ensuring that children retain information can be even trickier. Children tend to have even shorter attention spans than adults. It’s not even really their fault, kids just get bored pretty easily. That can make teaching them exceedingly difficult
That being said, there are people that have dedicated their lives specifically to figuring out how to best help children learn things and actually retain the information that they learn. Children are like sponges, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t challenges on the road to teaching them.
Preschools that are specifically centered around education take a lot of advice from these scientists that research child behavior so that they can make sure that they’re doing as much as they can to get your child ready for school.
Here are a few of the most commonly used tactics by these preschools:
- Educational toys
- Fun fact, retention of information is lessened when you’re bored. This is the same for children, so having educational toys that help hammer in the lessons they’ve learned helps a lot.
- Problem-solving puzzles
- Problem-solving is a skill that we use for our entire lives. If there’s a problem, someone has to figure out how to solve it. Problem-solving problems in preschools gives your child a headstart on these kinds of skills
- Educational enrichment
- Toys aren’t the only thing that keeps kids’ attention. There are all sorts of games and other sorts of activities that are useful for keeping the information in your child’s head.
There are a lot of other ways that preschools go about making sure that your children are retaining as much information as they can, but these are just a few of the most common things that are done.
There are even multiple types of preschools to choose from that have different approaches, and each one is powered by a different philosophy on how we should be teaching children. This might feel like it only makes the process more complicated, but generally speaking, that means that you can pick the best choice for your child without worry.
Types of Preschools
As we mentioned, there are a few types of preschools for you to choose from. Each school is based on a different teaching philosophy. That means that you can do a bit of research into each school type and find the one you think would work best for your children.
Here are a few of the most common types of preschools:
- Montessori Schools
- These schools focus on a developmental style of education and focus a lot on activities that line up with the child’s interests. They hope to increase the child’s natural curiosity by taking this approach.
- Reggio Emilio Schools
- This type of school focuses heavily on the creative side of learning. They do their best to foster a natural curiosity in children by having them partake in creative endeavors such as art projects and collaborative class projects.
- Waldorf Schools
- Depending on what part of the country you’re in, this is probably one that you’ve already heard of to some extent. This type of preschool hopes to create a home-like environment for students while helping to nurture their emotional, intellectual, and spiritual well-being.
- High Scope Preschools
- This type of preschool has a carefully crafted curriculum that is designed to help children learn as much. The type of teaching this type of preschool uses is often described as participatory and they do everything they can to have a lot of hands-on learning opportunities for the children involved.
There are a lot of other types of preschools available for you, these are just a few of the ones that you’re the most likely to run into during your research. Choosing the right preschool can even make a big difference because it can open the door for your child to learn in a way that works best for them.
That being said, any good preschool that is centered around educating your child should be enough. This is just a little bonus if you want to do the extra credit work, but it’s definitely not required.
Why Education-Centered Programs Make a Difference
Preschool is where children that are too young for kindergarten to go to get a headstart on learning. There are a lot of benefits to this, but the biggest one is the headstart that it can provide your child when they’re enrolling in an education-based program.
Studies have shown that children that are in preschool programs that are centered around education typically do better in all levels of schooling. From kindergarten to postgrad programs, children that went to educational preschools consistently outperform their classmates that didn’t.
Finding a Good Fit For Your Child
Getting your child educated is a big responsibility. Fortunately, there are a lot of absolutely stellar preschool programs that are ready to help your child succeed as much as they can. In fact, most good programs have this down to a science, making it exceedingly easy for them.
Your child deserves the best headstart that they can get and a good preschool program can help you make sure that your child is getting all of their intellectual needs stimulated as much as possible before they officially enter into the education system.
