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Which Preschool Should You Send Your Child To?

A Recommendation Report
Prepared for:

Jessica McCarthy

Prepared by:

Ashley Grubb
Khadijah Ladd
Jeff Smith

November 11th, 2015

Date:

November 6, 2015

To:

Jessica McCarthy
Instructor for English 402

From:

Khadijah Ladd
Ashley Grubb
Jeff Smith

Subject:

Repurposing Project Report

Attached is the report of our study, Finding the Right Preschool for Your Child. The
purpose of this study is to provide the support and resources for choosing the right preschool for
children through the use of knowledgeable and unbiased facts drawn from the research
conducted. We have completed the task of finding the necessary steps that parents can use when
taking on the role of finding the right preschool for their child. These steps include: Start
researching potential preschools at least one year in advance, Talk to community members about
the preschools, Go sit in the classroom to see how things are conducted, Decide how long and
when you want your child to attend the preschool, Assess the positives that you like about each
preschool, Assess the negatives about the each preschool, Inquire about the preschools potty
training policies, Determine the child to teacher ratio in each of the preschool settings, Keeping
up with the trends such as: languages taught, outside time, and snack nutrition, and Assess the
positives and negatives and decide which preschool to send your child to.
The process for creating the steps came about from personal experience while looking for
preschools and recognizing the challenges that other parents were facing. Through the use of
surveys and research, we were able to pinpoint some of the key issues that parents face when
making this decision. Many parents face the issues of figuring out where to go when finding a
preschool, who to talk to, and what they should look for when figuring out if the preschool
program is the best option for their child. Through this use of steps created, it will make the
process not only easier, but more informative of every aspect they must take in so that they can
choose the right preschool for their children.
When parents fulfill these steps, they will be able to gather sound and factual data that
will allow them to make an informed and educated decision in regards to which preschool their
child will attend. The results from this project shows that parents are more informed on what
actions to take and by following these steps it gives them a sense of relief to understand how to
make this decision. Throughout this report, we will go in depth with the research methods
constructed for the project and the end results found from the methods used. We will also go
more in-depth with why this project is of importance and how beneficial it can be for parents and
their transition to searching for preschools. With the overall work from every member of this
group we will be able to show the work and effort put into this project and the impact that has
been within this study.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 4
Introduction..... 4
Research Methods... 5
Results. 5
Conclusions. 5
Recommendations....... 6
Appendices.. 7

Executive Summary

As parents of young children start the transition of preparing their children for school,
they must pass through the stage of preschool. Many parents face the issue of not knowing the
process of choosing the right preschool for their children. It can range from not knowing who to
contact, to not taking the time to visit the preschools and seeing how their programs are run.
Through the creation of the ten steps (Figure 1-1), they go in-depth on how to find the right
preschool, what you should look for, and how this can be beneficial for your child; parents will
be able to make a clear decision on finding the right preschool for their children. These steps
guide parents in the right direction to understanding the importance of this decision and the
impact it has on their children. As a result of the creation of these steps, this study will show the
successful outcome from the use of these steps.

Introduction
A childs preschool years are very influential and vital to their learning. Every parent at
some point is faced with the issue of deciding where to send their child to preschool. As parents,
we want to ensure that their little minds are getting the educational requirements necessary. We
want to encourage them to be in an environment where they will be learning both educationally
and socially. Every preschool you look into will have different opportunities and different
advantages. As a parent, you will want to send your child to the best place where they will be
educated in both school based learning and new social interactions. You can read about the
different preschools via the internet, but the best approach will be to go and sit in on the
classrooms personally. Therefore, it will be best to go meet with the teachers and speak to the
parents of children that have previously attended the facilities to get information about each
preschool in order to make an informed decision.
There is plenty of information that is unknown when faced with this decision. A few
examples would be: how much does each preschool cost? Who are the teachers? What
experience do the teachers have? How do they handle different behaviors that will be present in
the classroom? These are just a few questions and concerns that I have in regards to the schools.
The children, as well as the parents, will benefit from the problem being addressed or solved. At
first, this process can seem overwhelming and confusing. But by creating an official checklist
(figure 1-1), we are aiding in the process of narrowing it down to the preschool of choice. In
doing so, as the parent, you are ensuring your child has a solid start to their years of education.
By using the checklist we provide, you will know what steps to complete and in what order. You
will be able to go about making an informed decision in an organized and structured fashion. By
completing the checklist and narrowing it down to the preschool of choice, your child can learn
socially acceptable behaviors as well as manners when interacting with other children. They will
also be able to have an advantage educationally when they enter kindergarten over the children
that did not attend preschool.

Research Methods

Every parent is eventually faced with the decision of which preschool to send their child
to. It becomes one of the hardest decision they are faced with as parents of toddlers. Not only it
is about choosing the right preschool, but you are starting to mold their education and their social
skills for years to come. A childs preschool years are very influential and it is vital to their
learning. There is plenty of information that is unknown with this decision. A few examples
would be how much does each preschool cost? Who are the teachers? What experience do the
teachers have? How do they handle different behaviors that will be present in the classroom?
These are just a few questions and concerns that parents have in regards to the schools. The
children, as well as the parents, will benefit from the problem being addressed or solved. Thus, it
becomes a huge decision. It is also hard to determine how to approach such a decision. As a
group we wanted to pick something that a majority of our audience could relate to. Therefore, we
chose the topic of the decision of where to send your child to preschool.
We started out by deciding how we could make this a universal and neutral problem
solver. After brainstorming, we narrowed it down to creating a list of steps for parents to use in
deciding which preschool to send their child to. In creating this, parents would have a stress free
approach to finding the right preschool. We came up with ten steps to follow to help alleviate
some of their choices. We made sure to keep it unbiased and neutral, that way each parent could
apply their own priorities and preferences. We decided next that we would create this document
using excel and then transfer it into a word document so everyone could view it. After that, we
finalized our list and edited it to make sure it was free of grammatical errors. We are confident
parents will be successful in using our steps to help them in their decision making process.

Results
Our final repurposed project is a 10-step checklist for parents of toddlers about to send
their child off to preschool for the first time. This can be quite the overwhelming process for
many parents, so we decided that we would create a method that would make this process a lot
easier for them. We believe that any parent can take this checklist, walk into any preschool, ask
the questions on the checklist, and walk out knowing way more than they normally would have.
It also serves to keep the questions unbiased and consistent, making it easy to judge every
preschool at the end of day with the same criteria. This checklist is meant to help any parent, in
any city or town, decide what preschool is best for their child.

Conclusions
In conclusion, our repurposed project is a 10 question checklist for parents of toddlers
that are researching which preschool to send their child to. We designed our checklist to be
simple and easy to use. Just take it with you, along with some scratch paper to jot notes down on,
and compare results when you are done looking at the preschools in your area. It is that easy!
Since we have not come across anything like this in the market during our research, we believe
that this will be vital to all parents out there with children about to go into preschool. We

designed this to be as universally appealing as possible so that any parent with any background
would find this to be extremely useful.

Recommendations
What will make this product successful is feedback from the parents that use it. This is
truly the only way that we can measure the success of our product. We can conduct surveys at
certain points, such as after they have selected a preschool to send their child to. This will help us
determine if our checklist helped make their decision easier. We can also conduct another survey
at the end of the childs preschool time, to see if the parent felt like our checklist helped them
make the right choice and that they were satisfied with the end result. Finally, we can conduct
another survey mid-way through the childs kindergarten year, to see if the preschool helped
prepare their child adequately for kindergarten or not. Ultimately, we could compile all of these
results, and put them online for other parents to view. That way, they can have reviews from
other parents along with their own checklist to help make the best informed decision.
Unfortunately, the measurement of the success of our product relies solely on the feedback we
will have to get from parents. Since this would be subjective measurements, and not objective
measurements, it will be difficult to rate the success or failure of our product objectively.

Appendices

In Figure 1-1 (table below), the table shows the Repurposed Product of the checklist parents used
when seeking preschools for their children during the project. These steps were created based on
personal experience and in-depth research on what areas parents are unsure of when making this
transition. Throughout this study, we go in-depth on the checklist and how they were created, as
well the impact that has been made because of the checklist.

Steps in Finding the Right Preschool for Your Child

1

Start researching potential preschools at least one year in advance

Talk to community members about the preschools

Go sit in the classroom to see how things are conducted

Decide how long and when you want your child to attend the preschool

Assess the positives that you like about each preschool

Assess the negatives about the each preschool

Inquire about the preschools potty training policies

Determine the child to teacher ratio in each of the preschool settings

Keeping up with the trends such as languages taught, outside time, and snack nutrition

10

Asses the positives and negatives and decide which preschool to send your child to
*Figure 1-1