Students presented themselves and their favorite artist (Keith Haring) in Spanish and English. They also sang the alphabet song in Spanish.

They were fantastic!

Its amazing how useful “Brown Bear, Brown Bear’ can be!

andrew

Pre-schoolers becoming IT experts early!

It has been a pleasure to see so many of you at our information meetings this week. Our Elementary school open house saw a record turn out to find out more about our Kindergarten and new Pre-Kindergarten classes.

The new Pre-K class will be for children between 3 and 5 years old and will follow the International Baccalaureate PYP program (note that *Riverstone is authorized to offer all the Diploma and Middle Years Programmes and is still a candidate school for the IB Primary Years Program (PYP)). In line with the school’s international mission, the program will be taught bilingually in English and Spanish.

The class will follow the same times as the rest of the school: 8:30am to 3:30pm. New for next year, we will also offer an early drop-off from 7:30am and a late pick-up until 5:30pm This opportunity will be open to all Riverstone parents.

Interest in the program has been high, with several applications coming in within the first 24 hours. If you are interested in finding out more about the new Pre-K program or any of our Elementary school programs, please do not hesitate to contact Rachel Pusch, Director of Admissions at rpusch@riverstoneschool.org, or call 208 424 5000.

Andrew Derry

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