With the start of the school year fast approaching some thought needs to be given about preschool and getting your child acquainted with the idea of school before they “have” to go. How do you find the school that is best for you and your child? Here is a list of things to do and consider in deciding on a school for your child.

What do you want out of a preschool?

Do you want your child to be in a structured learning environment or one that is less structured and incorporates activities like story time, singing, and dancing? There are five different preschool philosophies: Montessori, Waldorf, High/Scope, Bank Street, and other types.

The Montessori approach focuses on learning at a child’s own pace about different cultures, animals, plants along with reading, language, and math. Guides, what the ‘teachers’ are referred as, help encourage independence in children by asking the child if they want to try the task, need help doing it, or aren’t quite ready for it.

The Waldorf approach believes that a person is made up of the body, the spirit, and the soul. They focus on teaching children by stimulating these elements with creativity and their surroundings — painting, singing, stories, dress-up, and other things of that nature. Children get a lot of free play instead of watching TV, videos, or computer games.

The High/Scope approach revolves around a theory that children need to be interactive with people, ideas, materials, and events. And while they focus on letting the child be independent and let the children pick the activities they want to be engaged in, the teachers work closely side by side so that there is a lot of teacher/pupil interaction.

The Bank Street approach is considerably less structured and focuses on fostering a child’s development by offering different opportunities for physical, emotional, cognitive, and social growth — children are explorers, experimenters, and artists. Children in this type of school play with toys and materials that stimulate their imaginations with little or no structure.

Other types of schools generally don’t follow any one approach to the hilt but incorporate a lot of the different aspects of the other approaches into a melting pot of what works for them. So it’s important to know what you’re looking for in a school for your child so you know if the school offers what you want for your child. Not any one approach is more right than the others. It really just depends on how your child likes to learn and what you want your child to get out of the experience.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.