Preschool

The goal of L’École is to help children become bilingual and develop the qualities needed to enter Kindergarten and become successful students. In this sense, L’école uses French Education’s official curriculum for the classes of Maternelle (2-5 years old), adapting it to our students who have various levels of French. The Maternelle/ Preschool is

Cycle 1 of the student's educational journey.

Download our programs:

The curriculum can be divided into 6 main axes :

Appropriation of language
Discovering writing
Becoming a student
Physical expression
Discovering the world
Perception, feeling, imagination, and creation

The oral language is the main focus of the program. Students will learn to express themselves in French by building sentences with precise vocabulary and learning to communicate with their peers and the teacher. L’école encourages interdisciplinary work, constructing its schedule around diverse projects. The project approach helps children make sense of what they are learning. Each child is given a “cahier de vie“ (life notebook), which is a reflective personal notebook of the child’s life in class. We use it to tell about our activities and keep a record of rhymes, songs, drawings, and work. This notebook is also used to build a strong connection between L’école and the families. Families are able to complete it on a regular basis with pictures, stories, or explanations of special events that happened at home.

It gives the child the opportunity to explain it in class.

EXPECTATIONS AT THE END OF KINDERGARTEN (GRANDE SECTION DE MATERNELLE-GS)

Consolidated program 2021 – B0 (Official Bulletin of the French National Education) n°25 of 24-6-2021

These are guidelines for the student's basic acquisitions, and some children will surpass these expectations; our very talented and professionally certified teachers will ensure that each child reaches their full potential and finds their experience at L'école the best adapted to their personal development journey.

1. Mobilize language in all its dimensions

What is expected of children at the end of kindergarten:

Communicate with adults and other children through language, making yourself understood. – Express yourself in syntactically correct and precise oral language.
Use the vocabulary learned in class appropriately.
Reformulate your statement to make yourself better understood.
Reformulate what others say.
Practice various uses of oral language: tell, describe, evoke, explain, question, propose solutions, and discuss a point of view.
Say several nursery rhymes and poems expressively from memory.
Understand written texts without any help other than the language heard.
Demonstrate curiosity about understanding and producing writing.
Be able to repeat the words of a sentence written after the adult has read it, the words of the known title of a book or text.
Participate verbally in the production of writing. Knowing that we do not write the way we speak.
Identify regularities in the language when spoken in French (possibly in another language).
Distinguish and manipulate syllables: scan the constituent syllables of a word and understand that they can be deleted, added, or reversed.
Identify and produce rhymes and assonances.
Distinguish between sounds (syllables, vowel sounds, some consonant sounds apart from plosive consonants) in words or in syllables.
Recognize the letters of the alphabet and know their names; know that the name of a letter can be different from the sound it transcribes.
Know the correspondences between the three ways of writing letters: cursive, script, and capitals, and begin to make the link with the sound they encode. Copy using a keyboard.
Recognize your first name written in capital letters, script, or cursive. Know the name of the letters that compose it.
Copy in cursive a word or a very short sentence whose meaning is known.
Write your first name in cursive writing without a model.

2. Acquire the first mathematical tools

a - Discover numbers and their uses

What is expected of children at the end of kindergarten:

Evaluate and compare collections of objects with digital or non-digital procedures (immediate perception, term-to-term correspondence, etc.).
Create a collection whose cardinality is between 1 and 10.
Use counting to compare two quantities or to make a collection of quantities equal to the proposed collection (quantities less than or equal to 10).
Use the number to express the position of an object or a person in a game, in an organized situation, on a rank or to compare positions.
Use analog symbols (constellations, fingers), verbal (number words), or written (numbers) symbols to communicate oral and written information on a quantity up to at least 10.
Have understood that the cardinal does not change if we modify the spatial arrangement or the nature of the elements.
I understand that any number is obtained by adding one to the previous number and that this corresponds to adding one unit to the previous quantity.
Quantify collections of up to at least ten; compose and decompose them through effective and then mental manipulations.
Say how much must be added or subtracted to obtain quantities not exceeding ten. – Talk about numbers using their decomposition.
Say the sequence of numbers up to thirty. Say the sequence of numbers from a given number
(between 1 and 30).
Read numbers written in digits up to 10.
Start writing numbers in digits up to 10.
Begin to compare two numbers less than or equal to 10 written in digits. – Begin to position numbers in relation to each other and complete a gap number strip (the numbers involved are less than or equal to 10).
Begin to solve problems of composing two collections, adding or removing, producing or sharing (the numbers involved are all less than or equal to 10).

b- Explore shapes, sizes, organized sequences

What is expected of children at the end of kindergarten:

Classify objects based on characteristics linked to their shape.
Recognize some solids (cube, pyramid, ball, cylinder).
Know how to name some plane shapes (square, triangle, circle or disk, rectangle) in all their orientations and configurations.
Classify or arrange objects according to a criterion of length mass or capacity.
Reproduce an assembly from a model (puzzle, tiling, assembly of solids).
Reproduce and draw plane shapes.
Identify a regular organization and continue its application.

3. Act, express yourself, understand through physical activity

What is expected of children at the end of preschool:

Run, jump, and throw in different ways, in different spaces, with different materials, and with a specific goal.
Adjust and sequence your actions and movements according to obstacles to overcome or the trajectory of objects on which to act.
Move with ease and safety in varied environments, natural or developed. – Build and maintain a sequence of actions and movements in relation to other partners, with or without musical support.
Coordinate your movements with those of others during circles and singing games. – Cooperate, exercise different complementary roles, oppose, and develop strategies to aim for a common goal or effect.

4. Act, express yourself, understand through artistic activities

What is expected of children at the end of kindergarten:

Choose different tools, mediums, and supports according to a project or instructions and use them by adapting your actions.
Practice drawing to represent or illustrate, being faithful to reality or to a model, or by inventing.
Create a personal composition by reproducing graphics.
Create new graphics.
Create plastic compositions, alone or in a small group, by choosing and combining materials and by reinvesting techniques and processes.
Having memorized a varied repertoire of nursery rhymes and songs and performing them expressively.
Play with your voice to explore variations of timbre, intensity, pitch, and nuance.
Identify and reproduce, physically or with instruments, simple rhythmic formulas.

5. Explore the world

a- Finding your way in time and space

What is expected of children at the end of kindergarten

Situate events experienced in relation to each other by locating them in the day, the week, the month, or a season.
Order a series of photographs or images to reflect a situation experienced or a fictional story heard by accurately marking succession and simultaneity.
Use appropriate temporal markers (then, during, before, after...) in stories, descriptions, or explanations.
Locate objects in relation to oneself, to each other, in relation to landmark objects.
Position yourself in relation to others and landmark objects.
In a well-known environment, create a route based on its representation (drawing or coding).
Develop initial attempts at communicable planar representation (construction of a common code).
Correctly orient and use a sheet of paper, a book, or another written medium, according to instructions, a specific goal or project.
Use appropriate spatial markers (front, back, right, left, above, below, etc.) in stories, descriptions, or explanations.

b - Explore the world of life, objects, and matter

What is expected of children at the end of kindergarten:

Recognize and describe the main stages of development of an animal or plant in a real-life observation situation or on still or animated images.
Know the essential needs of some animals and plants.
Locate and name the different parts of the human body, on oneself or on a representation.
Know and implement some rules of personal hygiene and healthy living.
Choose, use, and know how to designate tools and materials adapted to a situation to specific technical actions (folding, cutting, gluing, assembling, operating, etc.).
Carry out constructions; build simple models based on plans or assembly instructions.
Use digital objects: camera, tablet, computer.
Take into account the risks of the nearby, familiar environment (dangerous objects and behaviors, toxic products).
Begin to adopt a responsible attitude in terms of respecting places and protecting living things.

The preschool has 4 classrooms :

Toute Petite Section de Maternelle 1 (TPS1) – for the 18-month-olds
Toute Petite Section de Maternelle 2 (TPS2) – for the 3-year-olds
Petite Section de Maternelle (PS) – for the older 3 to 4-year-olds
Moyenne Section de Maternelle (MS) for 4 to 5-year-olds

Aligned with the French school system, the Preschool is held every morning from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm or until 3:00 pm for our full-day program. The children have lunch together around 11:30 pm.

The daily schedule is based on the following:

8:30-8:45: arrival, welcome and free play
8:45-9:05: circle time with daily rituals and language (calendar, weather, rhymes…)
9:05-9:30: gross motor skills activity (obstacle race, dance, games, mime…)
9:30-10:15: activity (art, music, science, counting, writing…)
10:15-10:50: choice of centers
10:50-11:30: recess/outdoor play
11:30-12:15: lunch
12:15-12:30: circle time
12:30: departure of the half-day program students
12:30-2:00: nap time
2:00-2:30: recess / outdoor play
2:30-2:50 : Art
2:50-3:00: circle time
3:00: departure of the full-day program students

L’école offers childcare options in the morning from 7:00 to 8:30 am for all our registered students.

The after-school care program runs from 3 to 6 pm.

Preschool Financial Policy - 2025-26

The registration fee is $450 per child for the school year. This fee is non-refundable under any circumstances and must be paid at the time of registration. The child will not be considered registered until the registration fee has been paid. If the child is registered later during the year, the registration fee remains the same.

18-month-old students have the option to apply for 3 days a week minimum.

3-year-olds born after August 31st must apply for 3 days a week minimum.

3-year-olds born before August 31st must apply for 5 days a week minimum.

4-year-olds born after August 31st must apply for 5 days a week.

Tuition for 2024-2025, for a half-day:

For 3 days a week, $6,694
For 4 days a week, $8,270
For 5 days a week, $9,847

Tuition for 2024-2025, for a full day:

For 3 days a week, $9,482
For 4 days a week, $11,713
For 5 days a week, $13,944

Tuition can be paid either in full at once or in ten equal installments.

L'école-French International School of Raleigh aims to serve all students; in order to do so, we have a

scholarship program called the " Elizabeth King Scholarship Fund" in honor of one of our beloved teachers.

Should you be interested in donating to the fund or participating in this program, please contact us at administration@lecole-fisr.org. L'école will explain the process and send you the forms to fill out.