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Today was my first official day alone at home with the kids since we moved.  We've lived here, what, a month already?  Dave was home for a month and then his mom got here as soon as he started his job.  My first order of business was to find a preschool since Alex has been out of school since May.  I'm anxious to get him around more kids his age so he (and I) can start making friends again.

There's absolutely nothing scientific about it, but here's how I look for a preschool:

1)  Decide what kind of school you're looking for.  For Alex's first preschool, my criteria was pretty simple: a school I could actually afford.  In the Bay Area, that was almost impossible and Alex ended up in a school program that taught us mostly about what he hoped to find at his next school.  It was the very cheapest program I could find; two mornings a week cost us $285 a month.  Some of the other schools in the area ran upwards of $700 per month for the same number of hours.

This time we are specifically looking for an academic program, one that operates under a lot of structure and focuses on teaching phonics and basic math.  We want him to be challenged, especially by somebody other than us.  A lot of schools will tell you that they do a lot of "learning through play" but for Alex, that pretty much goes without saying.  He needs someone to sit him down and say, "it's time to write your name now."  So that's what we're looking for.  We also want a nice outdoor playground, clean well-kept facilities, good security and of course, world-class teachers.

2) Scour the phone book for preschool listings.  I found about 40 schools in the Vancouver phone book, so I had to narrow it down by geography.  I Google-mapped (yes, that's a verb now, just like xerox) each of the addresses and made a list of all the schools that are less than10 minutes from our apartment.  At first I thought I'd look for a school in the neighborhood where we want to buy a house, but we still aren't sure where that will be yet.

2)  Start making phone calls.  My list was over 20 schools long, so I just started calling them and asking questions.  My questions were: 1) tell me about your program for 4 year-olds (and I was hoping they'd say the words academic, structured and phonics somewhere in the first few sentences.) 2) do you have an opening on Monday/Wednesday/Friday mornings? and 3) how much does the program cost?  If those questions were answered to my satisfaction, I'd ask more about school hours, snacks/lunch times, and curriculum.

3)  Visit the schools that meet your basic criteria.  You can tell A LOT by just showing up and asking to see the facilities.  It's easy to get a feel for a school and I think it's important to pick one that sits well with your gut.  Security is a huge issue with my and was not handled well at Alex's first preschool.  I often forgot to sign him in and/or out for the day and I never once received a phone call to double check that he was where he was supposed to be.  If we can afford it, I'd like a school with some kind of electronic security system where it's impossible for anyone other than me (or Dave) to handle the dropping off and picking up.

4)  Once you've narrowed it down to a few schools, call the state authority and check that they are in compliance with state childcare licensing laws.  Ask about any previous infractions.  When I called about Alex's first school, they told me of two previous reprimands - one for not having the proper carpet stripping in the area between the linoleum and the carpet (a falling hazard apparently) and another one for having a leaky toilet in the boys bathroom.  I could live with those types of issues and figured if that was the worst thing they could find out about the school, they must be pretty great.

I have about four appointments with schools this week and I'm sure that list will grow over the next few days.  With any luck, the boy will be sitting in a classroom before the month is out.