Shopping for a Preschool?
Written By Nina Martin
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The Styles
- Play-Based
- Cooperative
- Montessori
- Reggio Emilia
- Waldorf
I'm fairly sure I wouldn't be writing any of this if my significant other hadn't found himself with way too much time on his hands one September a couple of years ago.
He was changing careers, you see, which meant he had two months off to focus (okay, obsess) on life outside of work. Doing the morning drop-offs with our 3-year-old, Lucy, he soon noticed that things had changed at her preschool. I had to agree. It was hard to put our finger on it though. Lucy loved the play structures (a pirate ship and a castle), the flock of chickens and ducks chattering out back, the garden with a real waterfall. But the books and puzzles no longer seemed challenging enough. The plastic food, the fairy costumes now struck me as played out. Our adventurous daughter seemed, well, bored.
Lucy's dad had been a Montessori kid, and though he couldn't remember what he'd done in preschool, he knew he'd been happy and stimulated, and he was sure Lucy would be too. There was a Montessori school just a three-Barney-song ride away. It had huge, sun-drenched classrooms and the teachers seemed wonderfully attuned to each kid. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I loved how the little girls dressed: in spotless frocks and party tights, so unlike Lucy's wardrobe of paint-and-play-dough-smeared T-shirts. I gave in. Flash forward two months, me sobbing into my pillow: "I just want Lucy to play!" On the other side of the bed, Mr. Montessori Dad is having second thoughts of his own. Don't get me wrong — Lucy adjusted to the new school well, with a minimum of tears and tantrums. She seemed more intellectually captivated, yes, but the Montessori approach was a major shock to all our systems, so different from the groovy Romper Room we had left behind. (For one thing, practically everything the kids did in the classroom was called "work.") How had we missed the differences?
It was, um, easy. A classroom visit tells you next to nothing about the real distinctions between preschools. Everyone spouts the same trendy, soothing phrases — ever heard of a preschool that wasn't "child-centered"? — that turn out to mean very different things to different teachers (and to you). But they slide over the crucial stuff, like, as one mom told me, the school that made all the kids who wet their pants go home in shame-shame red shorts.
Most schools aren't purist anyway. They're a little bit of this philosophy and that, blended into something unique by the teachers and administrators whose vision and hard work keep the place running. So, then: Do the differences even matter? According to everyone I talked to, most kids will do fine no matter what kind of preschool you choose, as long as the staff is loving, attentive, creative, respectful, and flexible (no small feat). And the truth is at her new school, Lucy's the same happy, curious kid she's always been. I just have to use less stain remover.
It's true that kids are adaptable — but we parents not so much. We need to know the school we pick will reinforce our values. We have to like the community of families the school has created; otherwise, playdates are going to be hell. We want the best choice not just for our child, after all, but for ourselves. To that end, here's the real lowdown from parents and teachers on the five best-known preschool philosophies out there.
Play-Based
The theory: Young kids learn best through free play ("I'm making pizza-ice-cream soup!") and experimentation (top-heavy block towers fall). The emphasis is on activities that encourage social development — sharing, self-mastery, conflict resolution — as well as core motor and preliteracy skills (i.e., mushing play dough now helps penmanship later).
The practice: If you don't know what your preschool is, it's probably play-based. This category is ubiquitous — and also something of a catchall. Some schools are pretty structured, with teachers leading most of the activities and kids mainly doing the same things at the same time. Others break down activities into smaller, looser groups, with costume-clad kids following their whims. (At one school around here, the only rule is: Underwear must stay on.) Some places spend lots of time on ABCs, 123s, and similar kindergarten-prep topics; others are strictly social scenes.
What Parents and Teachers Say
When play's the thing, the play equipment is important — and revelatory. Look for lots of materials that encourage open-ended, imaginative play: blocks, books, puzzles, art supplies, sand, clay, dough, water, tiaras and fairy wings, a kitchen with pretend food. Do toys and materials change from week to week? That's a sign that teachers are trying to keep kids engaged. Also, be wary of too many character-branded toys. Not only can they limit kids' imaginary play to, say, reenacting their favorite Dora episodes, they can stir up serious toy-envy and sharing issues, and kids have enough of those already. Other red flags: Toys and outdoor equipment that are either over-the-top expensive (you might be hit up constantly for money) or bordering on decrepit and unsafe (the administration isn't attentive enough). At my daughter's first school, parents designed and planted the elaborate garden. These parents, not surprisingly, turned out to be creative, community-minded, can-do types — and loads of fun.
Watch how teachers supervise play. Do they offer interesting projects and encourage kids to be creative, or do they spend a lot of time directing and correcting? During recess, are they attentive to what's happening in the sandbox, or do they tend to relax, even gossip? Overall, do they seem engaged or a bit bored?
When play's the thing, kids learn to get along. My friend Trisha remembers the time her 3-year-old's preschool buddies staged an intervention (seriously): "Ellie had been hitting kids for a few weeks. My husband and I and her teacher were trying to figure out how to handle it. But one day at naptime, while Ellie was still asleep, the kids gathered and decided that when she woke up they'd take her out to the big tree, stand in a circle, and say, 'We really like you, but we can't play with you until you stop hitting,' and they did just that. Ellie nodded and said okay, and she never hit them again. No adult could have mediated — and yet not ostracized — as well as those kids did."
Find out where the preschool's students usually go to elementary school. It's a good way to tease out subtleties in a school's philosophy. My friend Susan, for example, sent all three of her daughters to preschools that claimed to be play-based, but one was a "feeder" to a top-of-the-line, super-traditional private school in San Francisco; the others led to more liberal public and private K-6s. The feeder school turned out to be stuffier (no shock), yet it was more responsive to the needs of the parents footing the bills. The other school was more kid-friendly.
Be wary of too-nice art. One South Carolina mom recalls a painting her 4-year-old made of a rainbow. It was beautiful — too beautiful. "I thought, my daughter couldn't have done that." Sure enough, all the rainbow paintings tacked to the classroom wall were identically perfect, a sign that the teacher was more interested in pleasing parents (and herself) than in letting kids experiment and express their uniqueness. The mom soon discovered that the same rigidity permeated other aspects of the school.
Cooperative
The theory: Young kids thrive when parents are actively involved with teachers and other parents in their children's education.
The practice: More than any other type of preschool, "co-ops are less about the individual child than about the family," says Maureen Beck, who headed one in Albany, California, for 20 years before switching to Montessori. My friend Julia thinks of her experience as Parenting 101: "Once a week, when I help out in the classroom, I get to see Sadie in action with her peers, what she likes and doesn't like, how she handles conflict. At home, I borrow a lot of strategies." Some co-ops are entirely parent operated. Others have professional directors/teachers who run the show with parent assistance. Most are play-based and modest: The facilities may not be much fancier than someone's living room and backyard. But they also can be relatively inexpensive (some are about half the cost of other preschools).
What Parents and Teachers Say
Plan on spending way more time on co-op matters than you bargained for. Julia ticks off some of the responsibilities at her daughter's school: helping out in the classroom one day a week, fund-raising, shopping for snacks, attending a monthly meeting with other parents. "If I were working full time or a single mom, there's no way I could do this." As a result, she says, the parents tend to be more homogenous than she had hoped.
Be prepared for the not-always-pleasant reality of group dynamics. Negotiating with other parents about every little aspect of your child's education can be rewarding and/or a pain in the butt. "We worked together as a team on everything — potty training, coming up with art projects, deciding what the kids would eat — and it ended up being a real community and support group," says Donna Temple of Bluffton, South Carolina. On the other hand, Bondi Nyary, of Portland, Oregon, remembers parents battling over a child who was a biter. The family began to feel ostracized, and eventually pulled out of the school. "A more professional staff would have handled things better," Bondi figures. "A co-op can work because everyone has the welfare of their kids in common," she adds. "But it can get really intense."
Some kids will have major transition issues. Other preschools have just a few teachers for kids to get used to; in Julia's co-op, there are 24-plus parents cycling through the class. "In the beginning, the transitions were so bad I was considering taking Sadie out. She wasn't even sure who the teacher was." Another potential downside: an increase in clinginess when a child's parent is on classroom duty. Says Maureen Beck, "Kids love having their parents in the classroom but also tend to be a lot more fragile when they're around."
A big payoff: Playdates are a breeze. Says Julia, "Sadie sees the other parents as teachers. They know her well too. We're all on the same page about things."
Next page: Montessori, Reggio Emilia, and Waldorf
