Is Preschool a Necessary Expense?

image from earlyedcoverage.org

What I’m about to say is very politically incorrect.

In our area, preschool programs cost about $100 a month. Is it a necessary expense in order to have a well-educated, properly socialized child? Or can your hard-earned money be better spent on other things while your child still grows into his or her perfectly-rounded, well-adjusted, very-socialized, brilliant self? I would argue the latter.

You can send a child as young as two to preschool five days a week, and you’ll be asked to attend parent-teacher conferences, where the teacher will probably point out areas needing improvement in your child’s life. What could those areas possibly be at age two or three? Maybe the teacher will say he is not holding a crayon properly and is not sharing toys as well as she would like. And you will go home and cry.

Or you could just remember, your child is two (or three or four), for goodness’ sake! Coloring with crayons and learning to share will come in due time. Let’s keep our perspective. But that’s hard to do when the “educational expert” on your child (the teacher, not you) is pointing out all of your wee little one’s faults and areas needing improvement. Can we just back away from the situation and relax a little? (I’m sure you know all of these areas anyway as the parent, and as a good parent, I’m sure you’re working on all the character training anyway).

You can save your money and teach your child everything he or she will need to know for success in school in the comfort of your own home. Read quality books to your kids every single day. Their vocabulary and comprehension skills will soar. Involve them in your lives; that in itself will educate them.

You can pick up an early learning workbook for $3.86 at Walmart and take them through that closer to four or five if you want. Or you can teach them their letters and numbers, shapes and colors on your own without any workbooks. (By the way, I am not against workbooks; I actually own several --Developing the Early Learner, Singapore Earlybird Math, and the Ready, Set, Go series that I’ve ordered from Sonlight. But I don’t force my four-and-a-half year old to do pages every day, or even every week.)

One of the best tips I ever read about homeschooling (or schooling in general) is this: children have an innate, God-given desire to learn. You would have to lock them up in a dark room and starve them educationally to keep them from learning and growing. Obviously none of us is going to do that; the point is—they learn even when we’re not aware of it. (I believe this point came from Better Late than Early, or Homegrown Kids by Raymond and Dorothy Moore--great books, by the way!)

Now about the big “s” word, socialization—

Parents send their children to preschool usually for one big reason: they, more than anything else, want them to be socialized and learn how to “properly interact” with 10- 20 other two, three, four and or five year olds. Yet studies (and perhaps more importantly, teachers and parents) will tell you that preschool actually negatively socializes our kids. The reason is because no teacher, no matter how wonderful she is, is going to watch your child and several others as closely as you would at home or at a play-date. Therefore, behaviors will occur that you would be quick to correct; yet, in preschool, these actions could very likely go unnoticed or uncorrected. My friend’s five-year old actually came home from preschool once and called her a “b----”—a word he had learned from another kid at preschool. Hence your child is picking up and bringing home character qualities and bad habits you’d wish you could have prevented. But that’s all part of “proper socialization,” right?

Interestingly, a second grade teacher told me recently that the best socialization for a preschool-aged child is to be around his or her parents, siblings, and other adults. This way, they learn from you proper manners and proper interactions with people of all ages. With you, more so than with anyone else, they learn what is and is not acceptable. As long as you take them out on errands, to church, to the library, and a host of other places, they will be getting all the right kinds of socialization. And you won’t be paying $100 a month for it.

Going back to skills—

One of my best friends, who taught 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades before becoming a full-time mother, told me that kids who have gone to preschool may have the edge in kindergarten for about a week, but then it all evens out. Her encouragement was to teach our preschool-aged kids skills they’ll need for later-learning success, such as:

• Develop fine motor skills by doing projects like stringing beads
• Learn to trace shapes and patterns, with their fingers, and later with pencils
• Spend time coloring (as they’re ready) to develop those muscles. She said many kindergarteners have a hard time coloring because their fingers and wrists get so tired so easily.
• Help them develop their creativity by giving them large blocks of unstructured play. One teacher said kids are losing their creativity. You can given them a toy, and they don’t know what to do with it—how to play with it. She said it’s a great trait in a child if we as parents and educators can back away, not micromanage, and watch our child’s creativity bloom.

That’s really about all. They stressed the importance of reading to our kids, and then they also stressed the importance—and value—of relaxing about the whole “school thing” in these early years. They’ll get enough of that soon enough, whether we homeschool or not.

Now what if you would like your children to experience preschool but without the expense? You could pick up a little workbook and help them learn colors, shapes, letters, numbers, things that are similar/different, etc. You could even purchase a preschool curriculum package, and you will still be saving compared to enrolling them in a program outside your home that will cost you $100/month or more. I myself am taking my boys through Sonlight’s pre4/5 curriculum, mainly because it is literature based, and at this age, I think the biggest thing is to read great books to our children. But we don’t follow our recommended curriculum plan every day, because again—they’re little, and I don’t think they need such structured instruction quite yet.
You could skip the curriculum and find great books at your library and read, read, read. The Very Hungry Caterpillar helped teach my two and four year old to count (and colors). Blueberries for Sal, Make Way for Ducklings, The Story about Ferdinand, and The Berenstain Bears Big Book of Science and Nature are some of my favorite books for this age.

If you have strong opinions in favor of preschool, that’s great! We can, I hope, agree to disagree. I myself am a preschool graduate and have fond memories of my time at Maple Tree preschool (what I can remember). As a friend reminded me, it is a personal decision.


 My purpose in this post is not to bash preschool (although I think I’ve given that impression); my goal is to help other parents who feel like they have to send their kids to preschool because everybody else does it, and how will their darling children be “socialized” if they don’t, but they can’t really afford the whole preschool expense, so what do they do? It is to those parents I write this post. It is my hope that what I’ve shared may help you consider it perhaps not a necessary expense after all.

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