PRESCHOOL
French international Preschool school in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam RegisterVisit PreschoolThe preschool grades have existed since September 2006 at Boule & Billes schools. We welcome children aged 3 to 5 years old on the two campuses of Binh Thanh and Thao Dien.
Children are divided into 3 levels:
- First Year
- Second Year
- Final Year
Classes are created according to the number and age of children and they can be single or several grades. For example, children in the First Year (Petite Section) can be in a single level class or in a double grade First/Second Year or First/Final class or in a triple level First/Second/Final class. The children have class all day until 3:00 p.m. (see Preschool timetable). Class sizes are on average 14 to 23 children maximum. All teachers have a teaching diploma. The main teacher is mainly of French nationality, but we also welcome qualified teachers from Belgium, Switzerland or Canada. A Vietnamese and French-speaking assistant is present in each preschool class. They are qualified and have a diploma in early childhood or education. From the First Year onwards, all the children do workshops in English and Vietnamese.
Preschool: a unique cycle, fundamental for the success of all
Preschool constitutes a unique cycle of education, fundamental for the success of all students. It is characterized along three main axes:
- – A school that adapts to young children, which strives to guarantee their emotional security and develop their self-confidence
- – A school which organizes specific learning methods, prepares them for fundamental learning, in particular by developing their language, an essential element of access and structuring of learning
- – A school where children enjoy learning, progressing and living together
The length of the school week for students in preschool (First – Second Years) is set at twenty-four hours, 26 hours for Final Year Grade spread over nine half-days. The school year has 36 weeks, divided into five work periods. (Calendar) Organized in a single cycle, preschool is the first step to guarantee the success of all students within a school that is fair for all and demanding for everyone. It adapts to young children by taking their development into account and builds bridges between family and school. It organizes specific learning methods by setting up varied situations: problem solving, manipulation, training, memorization. Play has a special place here: it promotes the richness of lived experiences and the exchanges that result from them in all areas of learning. Preschool also allows children to learn together and live together: it ensures a first acquisition of the principles of life in society and respect for others, by allowing the child to build themselves as a unique person within of a group. Boule Et Billes Preschool program is based onthe French educational program for “La Maternelle”.
Preschool: a unique cycle, fundamental for the success of all
The preschool program organizes lessons into five learning areas
The lessons are organized into five learning areas:
- Mobilize language in all its dimensions;
- Act, express yourself, understand through physical activity;
- Act, express yourself, understand through artistic activities;
- Acquire the first mathematical tools;
- Explore the world.
Each of these five areas is essential to the child’s development and must find its place in the organization of daily time.
The primordial place of language is reaffirmed as an essential condition for the success of all. The practice of physical and artistic activities allows you to develop interactions between action, sensations, imagination, sensitivity, thought and language.
The areas “acquiring the first mathematical tools” and “Exploring the world” focus on developing a first understanding of numbers and the first mathematical tools, of the children’s environment and to encourage their questions. Young students’ need for exploration, discovery, manipulation, experimentation, play and exchange is stimulated to lead them towards the progressive mastery of new skills and knowledge. By relying on initial knowledge linked to their experiences, preschool sets up a course which allows them to order the world around them, to access usual representations and knowledge that elementary school will enrich.
The main axes of the program in preschool
Mobilize language in all its dimensions
The primordial place of language in preschool is reaffirmed as an essential condition for the success of all. The stimulation and structuring of oral language and the development of understanding of texts read by adults and awareness of the sound and visual components of language constitute priorities for preschool and concern all areas of learning.
Act, express yourself, understand through physical activity
The practice of physical and artistic activities contributes to the motor, sensory, emotional, intellectual and relational development of children.
These activities mobilize and enrich the imagination and are an opportunity to experience new emotions and sensations. They allow students:
- to explore their physical possibilities
- to develop their motor skills and balance
- to better situate oneself in space and time
- to understand the image of their own body
They also aim to develop cooperation and constructive relationships with others, while respecting differences, and thus contribute to socialization.
The participation of all students in all the physical activities offered, the organization and the approaches implemented seek to combat stereotypes and contribute to the construction of equality between girls and boys.
Les activités physiques concourent à une éducation à la santé en conduisant tous les enfants, quelles que soient leurs “performances”, à éprouver le plaisir du mouvement et de l’effort, à mieux connaître leur corps pour le respecter.
Act, express yourself, understand through artistic activities
This area of learning refers to visual arts (painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, cinema, comics, graphic arts, digital arts), sound arts (songs, instrumental and vocal music) and performing arts. (dance, theater, circus arts, puppets, etc.).
Preschool plays a decisive role in providing all children with access to these artistic worlds; it constitutes the first stage of the artistic and cultural education journey that everyone completes throughout their primary and secondary schooling and which aims to acquire a personal artistic culture, based on common benchmarks.
Acquire the first mathematical tools
Discover numbers and their uses
Since birth, children have an intuition of sizes which allows them to compare and roughly evaluate lengths, volumes, but also collections of various objects (“there are many”, “not many” , etc.). This perceptual capacity constitutes a basis on which the learning of numbers is anchored.
Preschool gradually leads students to understand that numbers can both express quantities and a rank or positioning in a list. This learning requires time and confrontation with numerous situations involving pre-digital and then digital activities.
Explore shapes, sizes, organized sequences
Very early on, young children intuitively discern shapes (square, triangle, etc.) and sizes (length, capacity, mass, area, etc.).
In preschool, they acquire knowledge and reference points on certain shapes and sizes. The approach to plane shapes, spatial objects, and sizes is done through the manipulation and coordination of actions on objects.
This approach is supported by language: it makes it possible to describe these objects and these actions and promotes the identification of initial descriptive characteristics. This knowledge constitutes a first approach to geometry and measurement which will be taught in elementary school.
Explore the world
Finding your way in time and space
From birth, through exploration, children intuitively perceive certain spatial and temporal dimensions of their immediate environment.
These perceptions allow them to acquire, within their living environments, a first series of benchmarks, to develop expectations and memories. However, this knowledge remains implicit and limited.
One of the goals of preschool is to gradually lead students to consider time and space as relatively independent dimensions of current activities, and to begin to treat them as such. It also seeks to get them to gradually go beyond their own point of view and adopt that of others.
Explore the world of life, objects and matter
When they enter preschool, children already have representations that allow them to gain bearings in their daily lives.
To help them discover, organize and understand the world around them, the teacher offers activities that lead students to observe, formulate more rational questions, construct relationships between observed phenomena, predict consequences, identify likely characteristics to be categorized. Students begin to understand what distinguishes the living from the non-living; they manipulate and manufacture to familiarize themselves with objects and materials.
A redesigned assessment
- a learning logbook, completed throughout cycle 1, and
- a summary of the student’s achievements, established at the end of the Final Year, the last year of cycle 1. The summary document of the student’s academic achievements is communicated to the parents or the legal guardian at the end of the Final Year (Grande Section).
As for the transmission of the learning logbook throughout the cycle, this summary given to parents reflects what their child knows how to do at the end of their preschool education. It is an opportunity to interact positively with families. It also allows, if necessary, to reassure them that their child’s needs and weaknesses are being taken care of, so that they can calmly approach the Grade 1, first year of cycle 2.
To learn more.
Official texts
An action plan for preschool: giving all students the foundations for success and guaranteeing their development
Memorandum dated January 10, 2023
Educational preschool program
BO number 25 of June 24, 2021
Preschool, school of language
Memorandum n°2019-084 dated May 28 2019
Fundamental learning in preschool: discovering numbers and their uses
Memorandum No. 2019-085 of May 28, 2019
Modern foreign languages in preschool
Memo n°2019-086 of May 28, 2019
PROGRESS OF A PRESCHOOL DAY (First Year / Middle Year)
PROGRESS OF A PRESCHOOL DAY (Final Year)
| Language taught | First and Second Year (Petite and Moyenne Section) | Final Year (Grande Section) |
| ENGLISH | 1H | 2H |
| EMILE* ENGLISH Physical and artistic activities | 1H | 1H30 |
| VIETNAMESE | 1H | 2H |
| Total language teaching hours | 3H | 5H30 |
Teaching objectives:
- Meet the demands of families and the requirements of our multilingual environment,
- Follow the recommendations of the AEFE (Agency for French Education Abroad),
- Offer a curriculum corresponding to the needs of our students and thus ensure a personalized success path,
- Propose a coherent course ensuring continuity with the French high school,
- Develop language learning skills, knowledge and intercultural skills.
At Boule et Billes schools, children learn 3 languages:
- French, mastery of which is the priority, and is ensured by the teaching of the French program in French in classes, but also by support in the French language (FLE) or French language of schooling (FLSco) if necessary,
- Vietnamese,
- English.
The school has a complete system offering the possibility of setting up a language course respecting the child’s learning pace and the AEFE directives.
Enrollments range from 14 to 16 students per class, allowing personalized daily teaching and exchange.
The policy for teaching modern foreign languages, built on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), aims to place the school’s educational offering in a context of mobility and international openness.
Students, depending on their level of mastery of the foreign language taught, are grouped into small groups for appropriate progression and teaching. Thus 3 languages will be taught within our establishment: French, Vietnamese and English.
In First and Second Year:
The Vietnamese-speaking child who begins to speak will first be secured and supported in his mother tongue in fun and learning activities while participating in the functioning of the class in French.
Vietnamese: 30 minutes of introduction to the Vietnamese language by a native teacher is offered to all children.
English: 2 x 30 minutes of workshops in English with an English-speaking teacher: oral communication, reading of stories, nursery rhymes and musical awareness with the fun Kindermusik method.
Added to this are two 30-minute sessions in Emile (motor skills, music, art, gardening, logic games)
In Final Year:
One hour of Vietnamese language and culture by a native speaker and one hour of English by an English-speaking teacher (Sport, Kindermusik, fun).
English: 2 hours of English and 2 sessions of 45 minutes of EMILE.
For children whose level of French is considered insufficient, a test will be carried out in order to set up additional FLE lessons (see FLE prices).
During extracurricular time, the school offers 2 additional hours of English.
Extracurricular activities will also be offered to children in French, English and Vietnamese. (See planning of extracurricular activities).
*What is “EMILE”?
EMILE designates a bilingual learning situation in which a language other than the school first language (French) serves as a vector for the teaching/learning of a subject. Language is therefore no longer simply an object of learning, but becomes a tool allowing access to disciplinary knowledge and know-how.
What is FLE?
French as a Foreign Language, abbreviated by the acronym FLE. C’est la langue française lorsqu’elle est enseignée à des apprenants non francophones en France ou à l’étranger. It is a discipline for which there are specific methods.
French Language of Schooling: FLSco?
National Education defines French as a second language as the language which, in France, allows the student to access a qualification. The acronym FLS can in this case be translated as “French language of schooling”.
It is a complex language articulating oral and written simultaneously, learned in a school environment and therefore always at a later stage. It participates in the cognitive development of the learner, is developed around an object of knowledge which is gradually constructed in the class. It requires the construction of a meta-discursive and meta-cognitive skill involving complex language material.
The FLSco is offered to students whose mother tongue is not French, but for whom French should enable them not only to communicate with others, but also to take courses. The difference between these two practices is that in France, the newly arrived student most often stays in the country and becomes French, which gives a different purpose to FSL: that of being a transitional language.
Language certification:
- French: DELF level
- Vietnamese : none
What is the DELF?
The DELF (Diplôme d’Etudes en Langue Française) and the DALF (Diplôme Approfondi de Langue Française) are the only French as a foreign language diplomas issued by the French Ministry of National Education. They have a lifetime validity and benefit from international recognition. They allow you to officially validate your learning of the French language. These diplomas constitute recognition of your educational, university and/or professional career in French. In addition, the DELF and DALF can allow you to study, work and immigrate to a French-speaking country.
Levels A1 and A2
According to the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), level A1 (introductory or discovery) is the most basic level of personal language use. At level A1, the learner is capable of simple interactions. He can answer and ask simple questions about himself, where he lives, the people he knows and the things he has. The A1 level learner can intervene with simple statements in areas which concern him or which are familiar to him and also respond to them, by not simply repeating ready-made and pre-organized expressions.
At level A2 (intermediate), we will find most of the descriptors which indicate social relationships such as: uses everyday forms of politeness and address; greets someone, asks them about them and reacts to the response; carries out a very short exchange; answers and asks similar questions about what he does professionally and for leisure; invites and responds to an invitation; discusses what he wants to do, where, and makes the necessary arrangements; makes a proposal and accepts one.
At level A2, we will also find descriptors relating to outings and travel, a simplified version of all the transactional specifications of the threshold level for adults living abroad such as: carrying out a simple exchange in a store, an office post office or bank; find out about a trip; use public transport: buses, trains and taxis; request basic information; ask for directions and indicate them; to buy tickets ; provide and demand the products and services needed on a daily basis.
- What is the program ?
The lessons are organized into five learning areas:
- mobilize language in all its dimensions
- act, express yourself, understand through physical activity
- act, express yourself, understand through artistic activities
- build the first tools to structure your thinking
- explore the world
Each of these five areas is essential to the child’s development and must find its place in the organization of daily time.
The primordial place of language is reaffirmed as an essential condition for the success of all. The practice of physical and artistic activities allows you to develop interactions between action, sensations, imagination, sensitivity, thought and language.
The areas “Building the first tools to structure your thinking” and “Exploring the world” focus on developing a first understanding of numbers and the first mathematical tools, of the children’s environment and to encourage their questions.
Young students’ need for exploration, discovery, manipulation, experimentation, play and exchange is stimulated to lead them towards the progressive mastery of new skills and knowledge. By relying on initial knowledge linked to their experiences, preschool sets up a course which allows them to order the world around them, to access usual representations and knowledge that elementary school will enrich.
- Are we entitled to the scholarship?
Only children of French nationality can apply for the school grant.
- Are you part of the AEFE?
Yes, we are an AEFE partner establishment from cycle 1 to cycle 3. From Kindergarten to CM2 (Grade 5).
- Can my child join the French School after “Boule & Billes”?
Yes because Boule et Billes is a school whose 3 cycles approved by the AEFE follow the same programs as all French schools approved in France and abroad.
- Is the teacher French? What diploma does he have?
Yes, FLE (French as a Foreign Language) or PE (school teacher) graduate, with at least 3 years of teaching experience.
- What time can we drop off our child?
The establishment is open Monday to Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 16:30 a.m. Reception is from 7:30 a.m. to 8:05 a.m. for preschool and elementary classes.
- Can the child have breakfast at school?
No, breakfast must be taken before arriving at school.
- What kind of meal is served at lunch?
Varied dishes, European and Vietnamese. We favor fruits and vegetables. see Menu of the month
- Is the meal included in school fees?
No, lunch is charged additionally. See fees
- Is the child still napping?
Yes for First Year and Second Year. For the Final Year, a quiet time is offered to them after lunch.
- What time is nap time?
The children of First Year (Petite Section) and Second Year (Moyenne Section) go to sleep after lunch at 11:45 a.m.
- Do they have snacks at school?
Yes if they are registered in an extra-curricular activity.
- What time can we pick up the children?
For children who do not participate in extra-curricular activities:
Wednesday after lunch, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 3 p.m.
And at 4:20 p.m., every day after their extra-curricular activity for those who do it.
- Is there a shuttle for preschool children?
Yes in the morning, after classes at 3:05 p.m. and after extracurricular activities at 4:25 p.m.
- Do you give showers to children?
No, no longer in preschool unless it proves necessary.
Come visit our school
Before registering, you can decide to visit our campuses in Binh Thanh or Thao Dien. Come with your children and your questions. We will be delighted to welcome you.