Great Questions to Consider as You Evaluate Preschools and Daycares

Selecting a preschool or daycare that will be the right fit for your family can be a daunting task.  This care center is going to be a place that you will entrust your child’s care, and it will become part of your weekly routine.  As you think about what will be the best fit for your family, there are several great questions to consider:

1) What does your family want to optimize for? 

This is a general question, but a critical one. There are so many criteria that you could consider including location, cost, tenure of caregivers, specialization such as religious affiliation or language immersion, and the list goes on and on.  Ultimately, it can be really valuable for your family to make the long list of attributes that matter to you and then narrow down to your top 3 attributes that are your non-negotiables.  These will be unique to every family.  Having a good answer to this question will help focus your time and energy as you consider your options.

2) Should we focus on care centers close to home, close to work, or close to something else?

When considering the location of a care center, it’s valuable to think through what matters most.  Many families opt to select care centers that are close to home as they frequently find that it’s wonderful to build connections and relationships with your neighborhood families.  It makes it easier for casual meet-ups on the weekend, birthday parties, and potentially these will become your children’s classmates during elementary school.

Another potential location could be near your place of work.  The upside to this choice is that it becomes easier to drop in when there are events. Plus, it may mean more time in the car with your little one(s). 

Another consideration could be if you have older children’s schedules to coordinate drop-off and pick-up, your best option may be a facility within a quick drive or walking distance to that school.  Thinking about how location will impact your routine and your weekend activities is an important factor.

3) How much will it cost to send your little one to this center?

Understanding how many hours of care that your family will need is critical as you think about your budget.  Care centers can offer a wide range of standard hours plus add-ons such as early drop-off or late pick-up.  Working through what your needs are and understanding what that translates into in terms of monthly costs is important as this may rule out some centers which start to surpass your budget. 

4) What is the availability of the care center?

A critical element to understand is the availability of care.  This not only includes the weekly hours of operations, but also what the summer options are and what the holiday schedule looks like.  Care centers tend to fall into one of two camps: 1) they offer year round care or 2) they offer academic year care. For care cents that follow the academic year, you may also find that they copy the local public school holiday schedule (likely trying to support families that have older children in those schools).  This can sometimes take some digging into on the website to understand, but this is an important aspect to consider as it impacts your coverage as well as your expected cost.

5) Is there a teaching style that you think will best fit your little one?

There are a lot of choices when it comes to teaching methodology (and we will write more on this).  Thinking through what teaching style may make sense for your child is valuable.  Do you think play-based, Montessori, or Reggio Amelia could make sense? Is a religious affiliation something that you think could be valuable for your family which has a potential benefit of making more connections to the community by attending weekend services?  It can sometimes be a little challenging to unpack what the teaching style will be in classroom until you go on a tour of a care center, but it’s a valuable topic for discussion.

6) Lastly, are there unique considerations that matter to your family?

These can encompass a wide range of items such as nut protocol at a facility if your child has allergies, nap routine if your child has aged out of taking a nap, or availability of extracurriculars such as music and art.  Again, going back to the initial question of what are you trying to optimize for can raise topics that may not have been initially on your radar, but can move up in importance. 

There are a lot of factors to consider as you begin to develop your list of potential daycare or preschool list.  We think answering these questions (and more) can be a really valuable starting place before developing your potential list of preschools or daycares to consider.