Social Skills

The ability to empathise and interact successfully with their peer group. By playing, working and learning together, children build their social skills, language skills, and self-regulation. With support from teachers, children learn to resolve conflicts that may arise during play.

Physical Skills

Children are encouraged to use their body and utilize the playground equipment to help them develop hand-eye coordination and core strength. This is vital in preparing them for literacy skills later on. We focus on a range of activities that help children develop their fine and gross motor skills.

Language Skills

Language is fundamental in expressing needs and wants and to create meaning about the world around us. Our strong focus on language is manifested through storytelling, role play, songs and one to one conversations with children. In addition to this, children begin to show awareness of listening to others and understanding simple instructions.

Cognitive Skills

The core skills that the brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, reason and pay attention. This involve; asking questions, developing an increased attention span, problem solving, visual discrimination, matching, comparing, sorting, and organising, understanding, fact and fiction (or the difference between a truth and a lie), understanding cause and effect and simple reasoning.

Adaptive Development Skills

These are self-help skills needed for daily living that will help a child to be more independent and self-sufficient. They include skills such as: dressing, brushing teeth and brushing hair, feeding oneself, toileting and washing.

As in any international setting we cater for a range of different learning requirements, specifically language needs. We understand that children develop a second or third language more quickly in early childhood and we believe that full immersion into English produces greater results. While some children jump into learning an additional language quickly, others need more time and we are fully supportive of this. For our Senior Prep students we offer EAL support that provides children not only with the necessary skills to adjust to school life but vocabulary that will help them navigate the topics that are being covered in the mainstream classroom.

Junior Prep follows the UK Early Years Foundation Stage while Senior Prep follows Stage 1 of the Cambridge International Curriculum. Much of our teaching is student-led where we follow children’s natural interests and integrate these into our lessons as far as possible.

We know that with healthy social and emotional skills children are more likely to achieve academically, which is why playing is still a fundamental part of Prep.

Junior Prep (4-5) is where children begin their reading and writing journey. A synthetic phonics approach is a proven method that teaches children how to read by introducing one sound at a time. We use the UK Letters and Sounds programme that consists of five phases. Phase 1 will have been completed in Playgroup so we begin Junior Prep with Phase 2 and aim to have completed the programme by the end of Senior Prep. Through a broad range of activities children learn to blend and segment sounds and most will experience success early on in the programme. We also follow the Talk for Writing approach which allows children to actively engage in a variety of texts, acquiring the skills and language needed to produce their own version of a text.

Our other classes in Prep include Numeracy, Sport, Science/Understanding the World, Integrated Studies, Choosing Time and Library. Particularly in Junior Prep we understand the need for free, unstructured play and this is included twice a week where children are able to put their social skills to use, negotiating, compromising, resolving conflict and forming stronger bonds with their peers where teachers only step in when necessary.