What To Look for In an Online Preschool

Demand for online preschools is booming, due to the ongoing pandemic, other concerns parents have for the safety of their children or the new hybrid work from home dynamic.  Online preschools are also an excellent option for homeschoolers looking to diversify the content their young child is exposed to.

Either way, there are suddenly a lot of preschools online to choose from.  What should you look for?  Here are some of the most important services and attributes.

What Distinguishes A Great Online Preschool

1 – Active learning and participation

An online school (for any age) should never be a passive sit-back-and-watch experience, and that goes double for preschools.  The teachers should do everything possible to encourage your child to actively participate, such as:

• Read-alongs with plenty of pauses for questions or interaction
• Crafts activities where the children are expected to participate alongside everyone
• Dancing, singing, and other participatory experiences
• Lots of Q&A time to ensure the kids are engaged and paying attention

2 – Cultivating a sense of community

Good virtual preschools will be using systems like Zoom where everyone is on-camera and visible during presentations.  This helps create a sense of community and comradery among the students, so they can see each other and interact.  If the video feed only shows the teacher, it can make a child feel isolated, not to mention confused when the teacher addresses other children they cannot see.

Children can make genuine friends this way!

3 – Flexibility in class times

One of the best aspects of remote teaching is that there are fewer concerns about maintaining facilities, keeping the lights on, etc.  Online schools are increasingly becoming more flexible with their hours, offering classes with different instructors at different times of day, so that they can fit into your busy schedule.  

4 – Many choices in learning activities

A good in-class preschool has numerous centers and enrichment activities for children to choose from, and this should be true of virtual preschools as well.  The teacher should have different activities queued up and ready to go, or there should be different classes to choose from to ensure every child always has something to do that they’re interested in.  

As a parent, you can help support this by ensuring your child’s learning space has a variety of materials – paper, crayons, books, musical instruments, educational toys, etc – that could be used for activity time.

Begin Online Preschool Now!

Playgarden Prep is the premier online preschool in Tribeca and the Upper East Side in New York City.  If you want to start your child off with a top-tier preschool education, contact us to learn more.