There are more preschools in greater Los Angeles than there are days in a year, and it’s not hyperbolic to say that no two schools are exactly alike. This plethora of options is both a luxury and a challenge for local families. How are parents to know which preschool would be a good fit for their child?
There aren’t standards in place for preschools — there are ideal components, yes, but no requirements. According to the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a successful early childhood education consists of encouraging and nurturing adults who guide children in a space where fun and joy reign and where young learners can be active. Teachers support those children emotionally as they learn self-regulation skills (which help with everyday actions such as taking turns and solving problems with peers) and more. In turn, those teachers are supported by their school via professional development, planning time and a living wage.
As parents, we must swim through a sea of preschool options, gathering knowledge and then making an educated choice. To that end, parent and early childhood educator Jenna Jansen says her top suggestion for fellow caregivers is to tour every school that piques your interest.
“You have to get in and see the program in action, preferably when children are there,” Jansen says. “You can read all you want online, and you can see the pictures on the website, but also you have to go. The second we walked into [our son’s preschool], we could feel that it was so full of care and love, and that’s what we wanted.”
Parents might also zero in on a school’s curriculum or philosophy. There are Montessori schools, Reggio Emilia schools, Waldorf schools and more. While an educational philosophy can’t be encapsulated in a single paragraph, here’s a little more information on the above pedagogies. We hope further research — and a school tour — helps you find a setting in which your child will thrive.
Montessori philosophy
Montessori classrooms are student-led and self-paced but guided, assessed and enriched by knowledgeable and caring teachers, according to the American Montessori Society. Spaces are child-centric (child-size tables and chairs, low sinks) and conducive to practicing independence at every turn, such as allowing children to pour water from real glass pitchers and put away their own learning materials after each activity. Multi-age classrooms are a critical facet of the philosophy, too, says Montessori educator Nicole Sloan.
“At our school, we have students who are 2 years and 10 months old, up to 5 1/2 years old,” Sloan says. “These 5-year-olds have been through the program, and they learn leadership skills by mentoring others. And the younger children have aspirational relationships with the older children. Dr. Montessori understood that, since children qualitatively learn differently than adults learn, a child would be a better model for a child than a teacher or adult.”
A Waldorf education
Erin Semin-Walsh, pedagogical administrator at Pasadena Waldorf School, says “there’s a lot of space given to imagination” in a Waldorf day. Children have plenty of free time outside, exploring and playing and developing their social senses. Stories, fairy tales and folk tales from around the world inspire play, as does a vast collection of “unscripted” toys. Instead of a rack of specific costumes (firefighter, princess, doctor), for example, a Waldorf setting would have a basket of various pieces of cloth that children might imagine as capes, blankets or shawls.
Janine Harrison, a preschool teacher at Highland Hall Waldorf School, says the Waldorf environment honors the idea that “a child is a being of will and movement.”
“Physical work and physical play is primary,” she says. “The children spend most of their day in movement. After really outward, physical activities, we come back in and have a quiet activity. And so, the day unfolds, in a predictable and rhythmic way.”
Overt lessons are far less common than teacher-guided activities, during which children absorb (and later imitate and practice) new skills, from setting a table to baking bread.
Reggio Emilia approach
The Reggio Emilia approach spread internationally from Italy in the 1990s. Schools in the U.S. that follow its tenants are known as Reggio-inspired schools. According to the North American Reggio Emilia Alliance, “We hold a strong and optimistic image of the child who is born with many resources and extraordinary potentials.”
The classroom is considered “the third teacher” (parents and teachers are the first and peers the second), so much care goes into curating spaces within the room (and outdoors) for individual and collaborative creativity.
Schools such as the Reggio-inspired Silver Lake Center for Creativity Preschool are multi-age, and the children wear different hats as they age, learning and guiding their classmates and practicing patience with one another. The students regularly engage in activities that employ their imaginative and problem-solving skills. “We now know that creativity can be measured in the brain and [has] a major impact on later academic success and prosocial skills,” Silver Lake Center for Creativity Preschool founder Chiara Angelicola says.
Nature-based education
After more than a decade teaching preschool in Los Angeles, Jansen took a managerial role with retailer Patagonia, overseeing its childcare center in Ojai. Though it is not called a preschool, Jansen incorporates much of what she’s learned observing nature-centric schools, or forest schools, into this setting.
“We spend a majority of our day outside,” Jansen says. “We’re located in Southern California, where the weather is really conducive to being outside most of the day and spending as much time immersed in nature as we can.”
Risk-taking is a key tenet in nature-based education philosophies; young children are allowed to explore their environments through climbing, building, balancing, moving heavy objects and more.
“Our philosophy is: ‘As safe as necessary, but not as safe as possible.’ There’s a difference between a risk and a hazard,” Jansen says. “Our teachers are trained in the outdoor classroom and to be completely engaged observers. As parents, we can take a step back, too, and allow our children to gain confidence, to be self-sufficient and to learn their own limits.”
Note: This is not an exhaustive list of the various preschool teaching philosophies that L.A. parents might find near them. There are also schools using the HighScope curriculum, schools focused on project-based learning, cooperative preschools (at which parents spend hours or days as facilitators) and more.
A former teacher, Chelsee Lowe is a travel and food writer and frequent contributing writer for L.A. Parent.
Preschool Resources
For more on preschool philosophies, explore these websites.
American Montessori Society
Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America
North American Reggio Emilia Alliance
reggioalliance.org
Forest School Association
forestschoolassociation.org
HighScope
highscope.org
National Association for the Education of Young Children
naeyc.org
