The Mini-Maternelle program is an exciting way for Brooklyn’s parents to provide their children with the building blocks needed for a lifetime of learning while exposing them to the benefits of a foreign language in a nurturing and supportive environment.
Our program is a means of solidifying the experience of learning another language while also offering a stimulating and challenging experiential approach to learning.
We provide a secure and loving place for children to learn and play. Learning and play can and should be joyful, a source of pleasure. We believe that a child’s intelligence and reasoning are exercised through playful creativity: trying out new ideas, expressing emotions, taking different roles, making choices, repeating known ways of enjoyment. Play is a natural medium for children to express pleasure, curiosity, autonomy and is integrated as a primary way of learning.
Our well-trained, highly dedicated teachers work to build on each student’s unique strengths, interests and learning style while taking into account his or her needs and levels in terms of intellectual, social, emotional and physical growth.
The daily schedule includes a balance of stimulating and relaxing developmentally appropriate activities. Through the well-known power of educational tools, our educators awaken in the children a life-long love of learning, empathy towards others and creative thinking.
At all times, positive guidance techniques are used to shape the interaction between the children and with the teacher in French.
Our educational approach integrates the arts, humanities and sciences in a manner that actively supports the individual and social developmental needs of each child.
Classroom projects are designed to stimulate the children to search for answers to questions in a variety of ways and through a variety of mediums. These activities promote the use of the five senses, kinetic movement, spatial refinement, small/large motor skill coordination, and the acquisition and understanding of concrete knowledge that leads to abstract thought processing later on.
That being said, skills are not taught in isolation. We use an integrated approach to curriculum so that children see the direct application of these skills in their learning. We provide opportunities for experiences that help children learn concepts about the social world and master important skills. Experiences are meaningful for children when they build on each other and lead to new experiences and further learning.
The principles of our approach are based on a coherent set of values and goals for optimum development and anchored in knowledge of processes of growth. We put an emphasis on interaction with the environment, and environment of children, adults, and the material world.
The classroom boasts a two-year age range of pupils to encourage an interactive social and learning environment. This system allows flexibility in learning pace and permits the mutually beneficial relationship to develop whereby younger children seek to emulate older children, and older children naturally become teachers by sharing what they have learned with the younger ones.
The children are offered a variety of opportunities to work both individually and cooperatively in small groups.
All activities will be led in French!
“Learning a language at a young age develops neurological pathways that are not stimulated in any other way. It helps children to become abstract thinkers and problems solvers.”.
There are no French language requirements to attend our Mini-Maternelle program – only an openness and desire on the part of the parents or guardians for the children to learn a new language!
Children must however be between 2-1/2 and 4 years of age by the time they start school in September 2017 to enroll in the 2017-2018 academic year. In other words, the children must be born after March 1, 2013 but before March 1, 2015 in order to be considered for the upcoming school year.
There are two Mini-Maternelle programs available depending on the child’s age (with an extended day option):
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 9:30 am – noon.
Monday through Friday, from 9:30 am – noon.
The Extended Day Option allows children to stay through lunch until 2:30 pm. This extended period includes supervised lunchtime, a transitional activity, rest time and dismissal. Children bring lunch from home and eat together in our welcoming Snack & Lunch Room.
Please note there are no spaces available for the 2017 – 2018 Mini-Maternelle class. You are however welcome to add your application to the waiting list.
Applications for the 2018 – 2019 Mini-Maternelle class can be submitted from September 2017.
PLEASE NOTE: There is an application fee of $50 that must be paid at the time of submitting the application.
When you fill out your application we will invite you over for a tour. It is an opportunity for you to see the school and meet our teachers and for us to meet your family and child to see if the Mini-Maternelle is the best fit for everyone.
The tour is only for families who have completed an online application form to the Mini-Maternelle.
Notifications of Acceptance are sent at the end of January.
Parents receiving Notification of Acceptance must provide their Confirmation of Acceptance, along with a non-refundable deposit, within 5 working days.
Current (2017 – 2018) Mini-Maternelle parents who wish to enroll their child(ren) in the following school year receive information on how to do so directly from LLS in November.
Please note that this is the Mini-Maternelle calendar. The calendar of the weekly classes may be different (please refer to the confirmation email that you received after signing up).
First Day of School:
Thursday, September 7th 2017 (Grande Section)
Monday, September 11th 2017 (Petite Section phase-in period begins)
School Closure Dates 2017-18:
• September Thursday, September 21st – Friday, September 22nd (Rosh Hashanah)
• October Monday, October 9th (Indigenous People’s Day)
• November Wednesday, November 22nd to Friday, November 24th (Fall Recess)
• December Friday, December 22nd to Friday, January 5th (End of Year Recess) – Classes resume on January 8th
• January Monday, January 15th (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day)
• February Monday, February 19th – Friday, February 23rd (Presidents’ Day Recess)
• April Monday, April 2nd– Friday, April 13th (Spring Recess) – Classes resume on April 16th
• May Monday, May 28th (Memorial Day)
Friday, June 15th, 2018