Riverstone International School is proud to announce its new PreSchool program for September 2009.

The new program will be a special and unique opportunity for children and parents in that:

· It will be an integral part of our International Baccalaureate (IB) program and a natural start to our Primary Years Program (PYP)

*Note: *Riverstone is authorized to offer all the Diploma and Middle Years Programmes and is a candidate school for the IB Primary Years Program (PYP).

· It will be a bilingual program (English and Spanish)

· It will be open to 3 and 4 year olds and provide a smooth transition to the rest of Riverstone’s programs

· It will have full-day and half-day possibilities

· It will allow for early drop-off (7:30am) and late pick-up (5:30pm)

The IB PYP program is designed to start at Pre-School with the emphasis on learning and inquiring using the PYP questions through constructive play. Starting at this age and aligning our program with the full IB philosophy at all IB age ranges will help children and parents to understand IB philosophy and pedagogy sooner.

As an International School, we will be putting high emphasis on language acquisition and communication skills through a bilingual approach, for several reasons:

· Benefit to our students in later life, as they work in a more global work place

· Shorter term benefits as we develop more exchange opportunities between schools

· Modern brain and pedagogical research shows that children who grow up bilingually from an early age, develop to be more flexible and adaptable in a variety of subject areas.

The absolute key to developing higher language acquisition in students (to the point of true bilingualism) is the age at which the child acquires the language. All research shows that ‘the earlier, the better’. The key ages are between 0 and 8 years old. With this in mind, most bilingual IB schools, purposely develop Pre-School classes as their starting point.

Our plan is to monitor the success of the Pre-School language model and then investigate the possibility of continuing this bilingual approach through Elementary school as a flexible dual-language option

You are cordially invited to come and find out more about the new Pre-School program as well as all of our Elementary programs at the Elementary School open house on Tuesday 13^th January at 6:30pm