The Maternelle provides a learning environment that promotes children’s autonomy while allowing their natural interests to channel through new acquisitions.

Our program follows the French National Curriculum and structures children’s learning around six content areas. Each domain is essential to the child’s development and offers a core knowledge, which takes its roots in day-to-day experiences, hands-on exploration, and authentic interactions. Further, our curriculum emphasizes the ‘shaping’ of character through the teaching of core virtues: respect, honesty, responsibility, openness and perseverance.

Developing Language, Introducing Writing / Développer la langue, introduire l’écriture

	Both language and writing are in the heart of our curriculum and aim at developing verbal skills as well as introducing the fundamentals of writing. Language uses and functions are introduced. Children learn to speak French where the language becomes a vector to access the national identity and culture.

Becoming a Student, Living Together / Devenir élève, vivre ensemble

As a first experience with school, the Maternelle gives children the tools to adapt to a world of people, routines and rules. It also educates them to the concept of community and help them build their selves through understanding of the ‘social structure’ and cooperation.

Discovering the world / Découvrir le monde

	The Maternelle offers children opportunities to distinguish the physical world from the living world through life cycles, natural phenomenon, space and time, materials transformations and man-made inventions. It gives children the intellectual tools they need to describe, quantify, classify and organize the reality of facts.

Acting and expressing emotions and thoughts with one’s body / Agir et s’exprimer avec son corps

Physical well-being is important to learning. The Maternelle offers many venues where children will develop their gross motor skills as well as their sense of self though outdoor climbing, running, digging, jumping and indoor gymnastics such as yoga. Performing arts (singing, acting, musical theater) are emphasized in all 3 years of the program as a way to strengthen the expression of emotions and self-confidence.

Perceiving, creating, feeling, and creating / Percevoir, sentir, imaginer, créer

	This domain of learning is represented through the Arts: painting, drawing, sculpting, acting and music. While painting and crafting provide children with a means of self-expression, performing arts such as music and acting teach children the value of sustained effort to achieve excellence and the reward of hard work.