Selecting a preschool can feel overwhelming, but you have done the right thing by starting the process while your child is still two years old. Preschool is important and rushing to select a school out of convenience can mean withholding the best educational experience from your son or daughter. Preschool Pathways is designed to break down this overwhelming process into clear, easy to follow steps.

Start your journey along the path of preschool discovery with our Choosing a Preschool guide. In this guide, you'll get an understanding of why preschool is important and what types of preschools are out there. The guide includes our Preschool Philosophy Quiz, an interactive series of questions that can help you discover which educational philosophy is most aligned with your goals and the preferred educational methods you have for your child. After you narrow down and understand your top preschool philosophies, search your community for preschools that mirror the preschool experience you believe would fit your child best. Make appointments to tour the campuses, and take our Interview Kit with you. The Interview Kit contains high quality questions to ask preschool administrators during your visit, as well as an environmental checklist to evaluate the location. These will help you compare schools after your visits and ensure that you are placing your child in a high quality preschool that provides a solid educational foundation for his or her future.

This is a very interesting question and one that is becoming more common with further research. To put it simply, the preschool years are extremely important because children in this unique age group are more receptive to behavioral changes and modifications than they are in college. This means that the preschool years are not only a more impressionable time, but they are also when future college students begin laying their primary foundation for learning. To understand more about how a preschool education targets specific developmental milestones and how this can benefit your child’s future success, read the Benefits of Preschool in our Choosing a Preschool guide.

Comparing preschool programs after touring several schools can be tricky. Classrooms and play yards as well as questions and answers can easily blend into one another. Moreover, specific knowledge about child development is required to compare the advantages and disadvantages of each preschool’s curriculum and physical environment. To help this process feel less overwhelming, start by checking out the Choosing a Preschool guide, where you will find things like our Interview Kit with High Quality Questions and Environmental Checklists for evaluating different schools. You'll find specific and important information about preschool curriculum, staffing, scheduling and more. After understanding what makes a program high quality, print out the Interview Kit for every school you tour to keep track of these essential questions and answers. Along with these High Quality Questions, the Environmental Checklist will help you track the overall school sites themselves. Accounting for the physical environment at each preschool is essential to find a school that provides optimal sensory comfort and learning for your child. Compare the High Quality Questions and Environmental Checklist to your own goals for your child and what style of program and environment works best for their individual needs.

Under the Common Core Standards, by the end of kindergarten your child will be expected to compose a statement that narrates a series of events in the correct chronological order they occurred with a combination of drawing, verbal description and writing. Furthermore, by the end of kindergarten your child will be expected to successfully demonstrate correct phonetic awareness as well as letter recognition for both capital and lowercase letters, including the five long vowel sounds. Kindergarten should provide the necessary foundation for reading, which means preparing your child for the first day of kindergarten is essential to keeping him or her on the expected track to meet or exceed these requirements.

Before your child’s first day of kindergarten, he or she will be expected to have some academic competency in language arts. For example, your child should be able to correctly identify several alphabet letters and have acquired primary language skills, such as the ability to demonstrate some phonetical awareness. Reinforcing literacy skills at home is a critical component to promote your preschooler’s reading readiness and success. Reading high quality books aloud with your child will help strengthen your child’s language skills and provide a solid foundation for future reading skills and achievements. Check out our high quality Book List for some great age-appropriate books to read with your children at home!

Every preschool program varies in how they promote communication between parents. Some preschools organize Back to School nights, fall festivals, field trips and other events that introduce families to one another. Schools may also circulate parent email addresses or phone numbers to help parents get into contact with one another. But it's important to note that not all schools provide these opportunities, and being proactive is essential. Everyone involved in your preschool program — from the teachers and staff to the parents of other classmates — are all a part of your child’s journey to learning about the world. This special community not only helps your child acquire new skills but also shows them a new range of care and love. Encouraging conversations, play dates, phone number exchanges or car pools are great ways to strengthen the experience between your preschooler and this new and special community.

Daycares typically provide child supervision and care, while preschools provide early childhood education and instruction. Daycares usually operate for longer periods of the day with a simple goal of providing convenient supervision services for children around their parents' schedules. On the other hand, preschool programs reflect a more typical educational setting and normally operate between the hours of 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

The differences between a high quality preschool and a low quality preschool can range from the physical environment all the way to staff training and curriculum. Low quality preschools may lack space, developmental materials, age appropriate curriculum and employ unqualified teachers and staff who lack proper child development training. Low quality preschools can have a negative psychological impact on your child in addition to leaving your child ill-prepared for kindergarten. On the other hand, high quality preschools go beyond standard requirements and strive to exceed expectations by providing students with an enriching environment filled with developmental materials and a trained staff that implements developmentally-appropriate methods of learning. High quality preschool education can lead to myriad benefits for a child. To find out more, read the Benefits of Preschool in our Choosing a Preschool guide. To learn more about the specific details that qualify preschools as high and low quality, read through and check out our Interview Kit.

Preparing for the first day of preschool is bound to bring out a full range of emotions for both you and your child. Starting preschool is an exciting time and precious milestone for your child, but he or she may also feel afraid of what they have not yet experienced. Change and fear of the unknown are difficult even for adults, so it's no wonder that a child’s first experience with drastic new changes like following a new schedule, visiting a new place in a new building, meeting new people, and following new rules can all seem a little overwhelming for a child. To help them prepare for this big change, tackle your child’s fears by having multiple meaningful conversations about what they should expect. Reinforce your support by verbalizing what steps you yourself will take to help them transition into the new school schedule and routine. Check out the First Day of School section in the Book List to kickstart a preschool dialogue between you and your child. The preschool years are a memorable time, so encourage your child’s excitement by explaining all of the fun they will have and how many new friends they will make.

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