<p>I never went to pre school so I really can’t advise you on how to pick one. My little cousins son has been going to a catholic pre school for age 3 and 4 and he absolutely loves it. The last time I saw him he was reading a story out of a small book. I was amazed! He didn’t know all the words but he was pretty good at sounding out the ones he wasn’t familiar with. He will be 5 this summer and is super excited to start Kindergarten. </p>
<p>My high school actually ran a program which I participated in all three years there. We ran two pre schools - an AM pre school and a PM pre school. Since our class periods were only about 45 or so minutes long, a preschool class would span over about 3 periods. We had about 15 students in a class as well as the teacher and we divided into three groups of five or something like that. We had about 15 preschoolers monday wednesday and friday. Your group taught preschool class once per week. On Tuesday and Thursday you prepared your lesson plans for whenever your next teaching day was. Since it spanned over three periods there were three “groups” of student teachers every preschool day basically because your class was only there for one period. Every student was “assigned” a preschooler that they helped out when needed and it was a great program everyone really enjoyed it. The kids were local from the area and I don’t think they had to pay anything to attend. We did art, science, math, games, reading, etc. we even had a cute little playground outside for them to play on. It was always interesting to see what everyone came up with as activities. Our teacher supervised us. At the end of the school year we did a graduation for the kids who would be starting kindergarten the next year and they got cute little diplomas and whatnot. 
I don’t know if that’s a program they have at other schools or not. Many of the people who took the class went on to become education majors.</p>
<p>Funny story that I’ll never forget - we did a Christmas party the one year where Santa came. We sent a note home to all the parents asking if they could please bring a wrapped gift when they dropped off their child that would be good for either a boy or a girl and we had santa hand them out to everyone. Most of the gifts were simple - books, a toy, etc. Anyway, the one mother had sent a gift of a bucket of home made cookies and a 10 dollar gift certificate to the toy store at the mall. I remember the little boy that got that gift was so upset he was crying and crying. He couldn’t understand why santa would give him a piece of paper for Christmas when everyone else got a toy! We kindly explained to him that he could take that paper to the toy store and pick out his own present. That made him feel slightly better and then he ate a cookie, lol. We also did a thing where we dipped the kids hands in finger paint and let them make their hand print on the wall and write their name under it. We had about 10 years of hand prints on the walls of the classroom when I left. I remember one little boy somehow “accidentally” stepped in the paint and “accidentally” opened the door to the class room and “accidentally” went running down the hallway. I thought the maintenance person was going to have a fit but they laughed.</p>