Children younger than kindergarten age can spend their time in a traditional ‘daycare’ or go to a private early education program. As a parent, it can be difficult to determine which option is best for your child. The early years of a child’s life are foundational for both learning and development. The education your child receives during these formative years can have a lifelong impact. To take advantage of this unique time in your child’s life, you need to provide unique learning opportunities. Both daycare and private early education come with a cost. The benefits that your child will receive from an early private education make it worth the cost and worth your consideration.

Early years are foundational for both learning and development

The early years are foundational for both learning and development. Your child is learning from the people and things in the environment. Every day is an opportunity for exponential growth, both intellectually and developmentally, during the first few years of life. A high quality private early education can capitalize on this unique time in your child’s life by providing age-appropriate and individualized instruction.

Early education helps prepare students for lifelong learning

The goal of education should not be success in school but rather success in life. When students are taught principles that help them do well in life, they, in turn, learn to do well in school. A private program that is designed with this goal in mind can help your child prepare for lifelong learning. For example, students in an early education Montessori program learn practical life skills that can be immediately applied in their everyday life. This transfer of learning from the classroom to home can help students connect the dots that learning can happen and be applied outside of the classroom.

Private early education comes with unique opportunities

Private early education is also worth the cost because it comes with unique opportunities for your child. You can find private programs that offer language immersion as well as a long list of enrichment programs for pre-school aged children. If you want your child to have unique learning opportunities, then private early education is the best choice.

As you debate the early education options for your child, do not use cost as your only consideration. You will find that there is a wide range of costs and programs available for early education. Take some time to also consider factors such as the curriculum, educational philosophy, and unique learning opportunities at each program. If the programs on your shortlist offer parents the opportunity to observe a class, be sure and take advantage of that opportunity. You will learn more about the program from one class observation than you could learn from hours of online research. Through a class observation, you can see for yourself why early private education is worth the cost.