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1.22.2008

Preschool

So I have some questions about preschool and I'm hoping some of you mom's of past and present preschoolers can help me out. Mikelle turns 3 in June and I have been thinking its time to start her in preschool. Is she too young? We just moved so I don't know anyone that would want to do a joy school type thing. So should I enroll her in a preschool and how do I go about choosing one. I saw on a blog that this lady had just enrolled her child for preschool in the fall, she went and toured the facility and had a little interview. Is it too early to do that? What questions would I ask them, I have no idea so please help me!!!

3 comments:

Cassi said...

Well in most places I think you can decide whether you want your child to be in preschool for 2 years or just one year. My son has an October birthday so he's one of the older kids in his grade so we decided it would be good for him to have 2 years of preschool. Plus, I really needed that break with having 2 other kids at home. At our school the younger preschool is only 2 days a week for a couple hours. It's perfect for him and he loves it!
It sounds like your daughter would be old enough to start the younger preschool this Fall. I think it's a good idea and I will probably put all my kids in 2 years of preschool but since she's at the younger end of her grade maybe it's different. But if you want her in for 2 years and you want her to start Kindergarten when she's 5 then this would be the year to start.
As far as choosing a preschool... I didn't go tour the schools or anything. I looked around for in-home preschools but our ward doesn't have any since we're mostly student families. So then my options were a local church school or go through a school district. I actually decided to go through a school district because I knew the one I picked had a good reputation and there were a couple other kids from our ward in that district too. I don't know if you have open enrollment or not but we lucked out that way because our own disctirct isn't quite as good and the set up of their preschool was horrible (they make parents come every Tuesday and with 2 other kids that wasn't possible!)
But we did go to the open house and meet his teacher and pretty much got all the info we needed from there. His teacher has been great so we haven't had any problems. And it's been pretty affordable compared to a private preschool!
Sorry that doesn't completely answer your questions... If I hadn't gone though the school district I probably would have been more invasive but it's a trustworthy school so I was confident that their programs were trustworthy also.

Cassi said...

Oh and also... I didn't start trying to sign Parker up until early Summer and then I found that most of the classes were full. Registration usually starts really early in the year for Fall classes so it's definitley not too early to start looking at places and signing your daughter up!

Andrea said...

Where I live, registration for fall begins in January and February for most schools, so I'd start looking now. I was lazy and let my friends with older kids do the research and tours and ended up choosing our school because it was very close by and half our ward sends their kids there (ironically it is a Baptist preschool but half of the students are Mormon!) I chose to do three days a week for both years because I like having two days where we don't have to rush out of the house. A lot of schools are only 3 hours but I love ours because it's 4, so I actually have time to do things between drop off and picking him back up!