EFIV offers a dynamic and meaningful early-entry system of education through its full day Preschool classes. Children enter our program at age three or four regardless of whether or not they are French-speaking. During the first two years of Preschool, the emphasis is placed on the French language. The program consists of:

• Learning and reinforcing oral French
• First steps towards reading, writing, and mathematics
• Science and environmental studies
• Artistic development: art, music, and poetry
• Development of motor skills
• Learning group skills

 

In order to be very attentive to the needs of pre-schoolers and to offer them the most conducive and welcoming learning environment possible, instruction and supervision is provided by two adults at all times.

The harmonious development of children is our goal and our objective is to offer them a way of life that answers to their physiological, affective, and intellectual needs. Our teaching, in French, is organized in the areas described below; they are adapted to the age and the learning style of each child.

Living Together

Living together is the first experience of our students. At school they share common spaces and activities such as organized play, board games, project work. Sharing of responsibilities, listening to and respect of others are emphasized at all times.

Learning Written and Spoken Language

A good knowledge of the French language is a primary aim. Each child must learn very early the basis necessary to accomplish it. With this in mind our students regularly take part in the following activities:

• Conversation with an adult or another student.
• Describing simple facts for the youngest, more complicated events for the older.
• Telling of distant or imaginary situations (tell news or a story),
• Making language an object of interest with games of nursery rhymes, poems, songs.
• Discovering the structures and functions of different types of texts using newspapers, posters, recipes, magazines, etc.
• Becoming aware of different phonemes with listening and cutting syllables games.
• Noticing the relationship between oral and written words, by learning and recognizing them in a text.

Functioning in the World

Movement is an essential element of the child’s development. During Physical Education sessions she will develop the following abilities:

• Running, jumping, climbing, throwing, balancing with the use of balls, hula-hoops and other equipment.
• Being aware of time and space, judging distance and reacting to a signal in team games.
• Expressing him/herself with his body, alone or with other children, while doing skits.

Discovering the World

Each child discovers the world around him a little more every day. He/she strives to know it better and to respect it. We aim to teach our students never to stop observing, questioning and finding answers. We try to accomplish this through the following activities:

• The world of objects: construction games, building and taking objects apart, creating projects (folding, cutting, gluing…).
• The world of matter: discovering the properties of natural elements and materials such as water, wood, earth, stone…
• The living world: the human body, as well as the main elements of life: birth, growth, movement, nutrition.
• Natural and human spaces: observing and describing: plants and animals, gardening, country, ocean, forest, rivers, roads, houses, recycling, noises and smells.
• Hygiene: the role of sleep, the importance of good nutrition, the main rules of hygiene, the five senses, an awareness of the rules of traffic, of dangerous objects and chemicals.
• Time: discovering the days, years, seasons and learning to use a calendar.

Imagination, Feeling, Creating

In school, our students develop sensitivity, imagination and creativity. Through music and plastic arts they learn to feel and express themselves.

• Music: vocal games, discovery of simple music instruments, listening to different music types, perception and reproduction of rhythms and melodies.
• Plastic arts: drawing, clay, painting, collages, building objects in three dimensions.

Learning Tools

While enriching their knowledge, our students acquire essential tools to develop their intelligence. It is in pre-school and kindergarten that they start to use them methodically.

Writing

By regular and appropriate exercises, our students learn at the youngest age to control the movement of their hand, to hold a pencil, to write more precisely. The older students are prepared for cursive writing.

Mathematics

• Classifications: classify using a given criterion.
• Numeration: estimating quantities, instantaneous recognition of numbers, learning number rhymes, small additions and subtractions, ordering.
• Geometry: open and closed figures, inside and outside, recognizing geometrical shapes.
• Organization of space: above /below, right /left, near/far, here/there.