ROME – Marymount International School of Rome are set to launch a pre-school in September 2018. It will be the first in the institution’s history.

 Marymount is a private, Roman Catholic, English-speaking, non-profit, co-educational institution that aims to further the mission of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary (RSHM). 

 The addition of this pre-school, which will be a programme tailored for 2-year-olds, will create the opportunity for even younger students to learn through play.

 Vivian Barsanti, Director of Development, Marketing and Alumni Relations, said: “It’s a play-based enquiry programme because they’re very little, however, to be able to enter Marymount from such a young age and to be surrounded by this English speaking environment and highly trained teachers, who’ll be following them with early maths and early literacy, is very exciting.”

 Ms. Sarah Gallagher, Executive Head of the School, also added: “The idea is very much the indoor-outdoor classroom. For the little ones in their early childhood, we’re looking to extend a flow, if you like, between classroom, because the beauty of the campus is that we can use indoor and external spaces simultaneously.”

 The external area will focus on growth and development and help youngsters develop key academic language for later on.

 Ms. Gallagher kindly showed me images of the external music classroom that will be built, for instance, and a wooden outdoor stage where children will be able to act out and dramatize stories that their teachers read to them.

 Ms. Gallagher also explained: “One of the pieces that we’re going to be working on is forces and engineering in our science program. For instance, if you look at this water feature [shows me image], we have all these sorts of rivulets and damns built in. We can help them understand flow of objects, the force of water, and build in the language in their early childhood so that when they move into kindergarten and start to do their NGSS science, which is a phenomenon based science teaching, they’ve got the experience from the earliest stages in their play, and the play is shifted between the exterior and the interior.”

 Marymount International School of Rome will be one of the first schools to present this kind of early childhood programme. 

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