Approach

Creativity is the ability to recognize and imagine new, unusual ideas, to realize them and produce something new. At La Petite Colline Preschool/Maternelle, we encourage innovative problem-solving. We consider creativity as crucial for a successful, independent, and happy life. Young children demonstrate endless imagination and creativity. Our education will shape innovators not conformists.

La Petite Colline Preschool/Maternelle promotes a culture of creative problem solving. Our program is designed to provide opportunity for choice and discovery. We support and reward curiosity and exploration and provide age-appropriate, inspiring and meaningful challenges. La Petite Colline encourage confidence, engagement and respects the willingness to try. We encourage children to express themselves through art, language, problem-solving and reward the unusual solutions. We concentrate on diversity, collaboration, and usefulness in purpose while appealing to children’s interest in novelty and the wonder about the world.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage emotions, and an essential part of life. Especially for young children, emotions and challenging or new social situations can be overwhelming and difficult to understand and express in a progressively positive way.

Our program helps to acquire and increase flexible skills to recognize, understand, and deal with emotions. Empathy and respect for diversity and individuality is one of our core values.Emotional Intelligence is an important part of leadership, true friendship, empowerment, and key to a successful and happy life.

La Petite Colline Preschool/Maternelle helps children acquire emotional and social skills by acknowledging each child’s perspective, allowing self-expression, promoting positive feelings, and encouraging alternative problem-solving.

Your child will be more confident and courageous in social situations and show positive strategies to reduce stress and frustration when she or he is experiencing successful attempts.

Language & Literacy: conversation describing weather, animals, favorite places, feelings

Preschool teachers read aloud expose children to new vocabulary, point out letter sounds and rhyming words, help children internalize their identities by learning to write their own names.

Math: arranging items in a series or pattern, counting

Business concept class: objects’ weight and balance; Why are my parents working? What is trading? What is money?

Science: learning about the world by observing and experimenting. planting seeds, experiment with what floats and what sinks with water and ice

Social Studies: resolving conflicts, expressing their feelings, exploring their community, interacting with positive behavior

Educational materials and arts are carefully selected to support co-operation, creativity, exploration. La Petite Colline believes in relevant play/toy experiences can help children cultivate new skill sets. Learning through toys allows children to think deeply and internalize learning. It can also contribute to more group collaborations, and a mind-set for concepts such as sharing, waiting, contributing, compromise but also taking charge, and focusing on a task in order to reach a mutual goal.

We offer hands-on interactive experiences such as with our Magnetic interactive wall, which highlights slope, momentum, and gravity through hands-on experimentation. Children arrange rings and ramps to create vertical or horizontal paths for wooden balls. In our fiberglass studio and light laboratory children are playing with colors, patterns, and forms. Our young scientists also get to examine animal, insect, and human x-ray images on our light tables. Another highlight is our material discovery boxes, which stimulate their imagination.

We offer hands-on learning with mathematics, language, and small motor coordination through manipulative symbolic materials that children can touch, move, sort, pile, and incorporate into their pretend play. A string of small magnets might become a train on a journey somewhere in your child’s imagination. Soft clay also offers pretending time and language skill-building as he or she talks about what is being created. Puzzles promote deductive reasoning and recognizing patterns. The goal is to address as many ways children learn through each of their experiences at La Petite Colline.