Preschool visiting
We've visited two preschools for Tobey for the fall and are starting to see that as non-neurotic as I would like to be as a first-time parent considering preschool, I'm seeing that not all preschools are created the same or equal. It forces me to think (and for good): what do we really want out of a preschool experience for Tobey?
Socialization - I thought this would be a given, that if Tobey goes to any school, he'd naturally have a lot of interaction with other kids at school. But we did visit a Montessori school and found that it might not be true in every school. In that particular school, the kids were working really well independently. Perhaps too well? There was hardly any interaction between the kids. They were superwell disciplined but they were doing their own activities each to himself. That's what Tobey does at home now! :-
Chinese language - Tom and my feeble efforts to speak Chinese at home have failed miserably. And so two of the three preschools we're looking at right now are bilingual. (The third is a Christian Montessori school our friends kids' go/went to.) We can't help but think Tobey is such a sponge for knowledge, including language. What little Chinese he gets from my mom he "gets", using Chinese with her ("bao bao") versus English with us ("up up").
Discipline - We just want a school that keeps their kids under control. No one wants their kid coming home having picked up all the behavior of the worst behaved kid at school. Then again, I've wondered if Tobey might end up being that kid, having screamed and thrown a tantrum while we were visiting one of the schools. Right in front of the director too. Great.
Academics - We do want him to learn, obviously, but I'd say this is actually lower on the list than I originally thought it might be. Now that he knows his ABC's, maybe even the lowercase too, and various other little suprising nuggets of knowledge, I think socialization and Chinese language bubble up higher in priority than this one.
Bible - After visiting the Christian Montessori school that has daily chapel time, I also was forced to think through that if a school couldn't have it all, what would Tobey really need to get at school that he can't get at home? I realized Bible learning isn't one of them, as we read the Bible to him every night and he has toddler nursery (which does teach lessons) on Sundays. One of the Chinese biligual preschools was based on Christian principles, which is good enough for me.
One of the school's applications is due March 1. I guess we'll narrow the field if not decide by then!
posted by Ang @ 11:00 PM
1 Comments:
Definitely hard to know what the best school environment will be. Partly has to do with the child's temperament. We put Connor in a Montessori/Mix preschool. Because it was not pure Montessori, there was some circle time. But I was worried to see him playing so much by himself. The year started with a lot of doubt on our part about whether Connor was in the right program, with the right teacher. I almost switched his class. In the end we felt that changing classes would upset Connor more, so we stuck it out and it turns out the teacher had a good sense of letting him develop socially at his own pace, and he ended up making great friends and doing well. So perhaps one of the best things to look for is a teacher with lots of experience teaching little kids (i.e. years and years). He or she may have something useful to teach us parents as well.
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