Online Preschools- 5 Reasons They Work and 5 Reasons They Don't

Pandemic Parenting for Toddlers: Online PreSchools

My home, which many guests confuse with a playschool these days! Photo courtesy: Author’s Camera

One of my toddlers was lagging in some social milestones last year. During researching child development for him, I came across an entirely new concept, online preschools.

Homeschooling has been around forever. In British India, it was standard for children to learn maths, letters, and literature via educated tutors who taught them at home.

5 reasons why online preschools would help out many parents

1. There aren’t good preschools within the geographical distance
2. Transport is not available to many people or in many schools. For toddlers who are learning to speak, this is especially important because they wouldn’t be able to share any problems, and the transporter has to be vigilant
3. Preschool is not always affordable many times
4. Many people don’t know the importance of a good preschool. Others are hesitant to send children outside before they are speaking fluently
5. Physical preschools expose children daily to pathogens, especially during a pandemic!

Even today, many people suffer from limitations of location, finances, and awareness about schooling their toddlers. Given this background, online preschools do have a vacuum to fill.

At the same time, I was skeptical because

1. I could not imagine my toddler sitting still for any period of time, let alone in a one-hour didactic class.
2. I wasn’t sure if the content of the curriculum would be helpful.
3. I dreaded (and still do) the amount of involvement I would have to put in.
4. I wasn’t sure if I would have time to help them with the school.
5. I felt the child wouldn’t learn without physical social interaction with other children

Anyway, I bought "admission" to some of these online schools for my kid with this background. All of these schools came with monthly activity boxes. Most of them have actual online classes where teachers teach live. A few have recorded videos where teachers act out the classes.

The preschool which my toddler enjoyed the most has 12 recorded classes in a month. Each class has about six sessions of ten minutes each. The teacher talks about one topic and helps with the day’s activities. The material for the day’s activities is provided in the box and is age-appropriate for toddlers (sticking, cutting, painting, crayons, singing). The teachers are trained in child behavior and voice modulation to get attention. There is a lot of dancing and singing in the one hour.

Long story short, toddlers CAN sit through one-hour classes and enjoy them. Yes, adult involvement is needed for online classes, at least at first. But, adults can also enjoy the classes. These classes help parents interact with their children in an age-appropriate manner.

Six months of online classes have helped my kid catch and exceed most of the social milestones. So that is one thing I learned during the pandemic, that homeschooling with the proper material is quite enjoyable.