Kindergarten or the first learning cycle

One of the specific features of the French system is to provide instruction and education to children from the age of three. This is the first cycle of primary school: the first learning cycle consisting of:

• la Petite Section (first year),

• la Moyenne Section (second year),

• la Grande Section (third and final year).

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The main objectives of this cycle are as follows: 

• To offer a living environment and an organisation that promotes autonomy and first experiences.

• Put the student in situations of specific discoveries that will lead him/her to build new ways of acting on his/her environment, essentially through play, verbalisation, experimentation with group life, autonomous research, sensorial and motor experience according to a path that is his/her own.

• Encourage work through supervised, semi-directed or free workshops that will alternate during the day according to the learning objectives set by the teacher.

• Socialisation and discovery of the world that constitutes the basis for future acquisitions.

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Five priority areas of activity: 

• mobilise language in all its dimensions,

• to act, to express oneself, to understand through physical activity,

• to act, to express oneself, to understand through artistic activities,

• build the first tools to structure his thinking,

• to explore the world.

 

For each of these areas, skills must be acquired at the end of the year. They are acquired in successive stages, the level of requirement gradually increasing from Petite Section to Grande Section.

 

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