My Kid
My Kid bilingual primary school (6-10 years) was opened on 3 September 2018.
My Kid teaching staff consists of highly qualified teachers with diverse linguistic, didactic and artistic skills. Teachers and educators work in synergy on proposals, which are adapted to the age and the need for direct experimentation of the individual and the group, in order to motivate the child towards knowledge. Such a structured approach favours a growth path, where the child is the first protagonist of all learning, guided by his own curiosity and by the desire to discover the world around him, and thus become part of it.
The spaces
The spaces of the My Kid School have been designed to create an environment that can stimulate and facilitate this path and objective: the school is a welcoming, well-kept, tidy and properly structured place that encourages an attitude to research, to study and to compare. The outdoor areas, exploited to their full potential, complete the daily experiences of the young students.
The classrooms are large and bright, enriched by glass windows that enhance the natural beauty of the area in which the facility is located. The constant view of the outside creates an effect of continuity between inside and outside, which is very important for the harmonious development of the children. Dedicated areas within each class are designed to stimulate curiosity and research in the linguistic, mathematical, scientific, historical, geographical and narrative fields.
For Physical Education activities we use the gyms in neighbouring municipalities or outdoor spaces on the campus.
Outdoor
Outdoor Education plays a very important role, not only for the Nursery and the Pre-school, but also for My Kid, as it is fundamental in My School Ticino. Activities are proposed daily to encourage, through direct experience, the knowledge of the environment, nature and the surrounding area. Outdoor recreation, lessons in the green, artistic workshops in nature, lunches in the woods and trips around the area are an integral part of the My Kid programme.
The School also boasts a large language laboratory (English of course and French from 3rd grade onwards, according to the Cantonal Study Plan) as well as a brand new, well-equipped STEM classroom (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Here the children experiment, under the supervision of qualified teachers, new technologies, work on computers, learn the rudiments of robotics and programming and live the emotion of a real science laboratory, which also gives them continuity with their Outdoor experiences.
Pedagogical project
The primary school My Kid deliberately does not align with any specific approach, but instead takes ideas and reflections from different lines of thought and implements their principles in practical and stimulating proposals for the group and the individual student. The fundamental pillars of My School Ticino, which are described in detail in the dedicated section, include: the Montessori Method, to which the class teachers are trained; the Reggio Emilia approach of Loris Malaguzzi with the 100 languages and the large space dedicated to art and creative experimentation; and Outdoor Education. The entire educational proposal in My School is constantly developed in a full time Italian/English bilingual environment.
The Primary School specifically aims to guide the child in his intellectual and psychic growth, meeting his needs for discovery, knowledge of the world and social interaction, so that he can build his own self and the man he will be.
It is the task of the school and of the adults, who work there, to free the child of anything that hinders the natural pattern of his or her development. This is achieved through targeted actions:
- Setting up a rationally organised and articulated workshop environment in which the child can move freely and find answers to his or her need for research, relationships and socialisation.
- Setting up, with the help of the children, a class library full of books of various kinds, which will encourage the enrichment of knowledge and different languages.
- Promoting research, observations and educational outings, which will always allow first-hand experience of knowledge.
- Facilitating access to the development materials, which give the child free choice and the opportunity to explore knowledge through concrete use. The materials, available to the children, can be used by each child, according to their interest and the appropriate time, for individual or group work.
- Ensuring the constant presence of an adult-guide, who supports and encourages individual activity according to the times and modalities of each child; an adult who encourages exchanges and relationships and teaches respect for the shared rules without judging, evaluating, rewarding or punishing.
The teacher, who is attentive to the needs of the different ages, not only prepares the environment, but also presents topics, through the Great Lessons, that arouse curiosity and desire to learn more through individual or group research and experimentation work (the concept of the Great Lesson -or Cosmic Story- is examined further in the section on Cosmic Education).
In this educational context children are satisfied and serene, as they are respected as individuals and will gain confidence in their own abilities, autonomy in carrying out their work, independence, capacity to collaborate and awareness of themselves and others.
Programme
In full compliance with the Study Plan of the Canton of Ticino, the My Kid educational offering has been expanded to include Italian/English bilingualism, direct experiences through Outdoor Education, experimentation and research proposed in the Stem classroom for science and technology and extensive artistic exploration. The programme is also supported by the active pedagogy adopted by the School.
Linguistic area
Language plays a fundamental role, not only for its specific disciplinary aspect, but as a transversal element necessary to all cognitive areas and, more broadly, to the general development of the human personality. At primary school age, the child shows great sensitivity to language and wishes to communicate his thoughts to others, both orally and in writing. Through written language he comes into contact with information about the world around him and can deepen his own interests. Through Montessori material, the child also moves from the acquisition of the tools of reading and writing to an increasingly complex use of language.
There are many read-write proposals for the acquisition of both oral and written linguistic property:
classified nomenclatures as lexical enrichment (animals, plants, objects…)
recognition of alphabetical and orthographical sounds
grammar games for word classification (articles, nouns, verbs, adjectives…)
question games for the understanding of sentence construction (logical analysis)
production of spontaneous and guided writing
reading of words, phrases, small books in order to move on, according to the rhythm of each child, to the exploration of more complex books and texts, until reaching autonomous comprehension, research and in-depth skills, which can be applied to texts of increasing difficulty, whether proposed by the teacher or with which the student wishes to engage.
LINGUISTIC AREA – Italian/English bilingualism
With the bilingual project, the children are constantly exposed in a natural way to the English language, accelerating their learning also through the teaching of school subjects in that language.
The approach to the language is based on a process in which listening is the first cognitive level, followed by comprehension and assimilation, up to production. The methodology used involves individual activity with specific material, but it also includes numerous collective moments of relationship and communication to allow the oral expressive activity (production of dialogues, dramatisations, songs), listening to audio and watching videos. Later children also begin to write, understanding gradually the phonetic and grammatical rules, however they always aim at a spontaneous and direct use of the language.
Logical-mathematical area
The material relating to these subject areas is particularly significant for the attractiveness it exerts on children and the simplicity of its use: in the Montessori Method, the material allows mathematical concepts to be concretely represented and decoded.
Using the material proposed, children understand the rules and their meaning: by counting and handling real quantities, concrete objects, everyone grasps, assimilates and abstracts mathematical procedures, from quantity-digit association to the execution of complex operations and problems, from the handling of geometric shapes to the calculation of their measurements, from square numbers to algebra.
The manipulation of the material enables a body perception of arithmetic and geometry: an extraordinarily effective way of deep, non-mechanical memorisation, which leads children to the process of abstraction in a natural way.
The mathematics material is also an important scientific link between child and environment. By using the material according to precise procedures, the mind trains itself to build logical categories of thought and develops its rational component. The material allows the child to check and correct any mistakes, without the mediation of the teacher.
More specifically, the acquisition of logical-mathematical competences takes place in stages: around an important central idea, there are parallel activities carried out to explore the details.
As regards arithmetic, the stages, around which these competences are developed, are mainly three:
knowledge of numbers from 1 to 10 (knowledge of the digits at the basis of the decimal numbering system): decomposition of quantities, number formation up to ten, comparison between numerical quantities.
knowledge of numbers 1 to 1000 (organisation of the decimal system): the four arithmetic operations as a concept and memorisation of calculations, solving simple problem situations and their representation.
Knowledge of numbers 1 to 1,000,000 (positional value of numerical digits): the technique of arithmetical operations.
In geometry, the children gradually learn the classification of plane and solid geometric shapes and the relationship between the various shapes.
Cosmic education
This area includes everything that is part of the great spectacle of the world, with its geological, biological and anthropological evolution. History, as the story of peoples, civilisations and cultures, is closely intertwines with geography, which studies places, their characteristics and transformations and with sciences, a fascinating tool for understanding the laws that govern our universe.
From the age of 6, the child asks himself moral, spiritual and intellectual questions, supported and animated by a great imaginative power and gradually becomes aware of the importance of human action, in time and space, feeling himself a ‘citizen of the universe’: through cosmic education, our educational project offers answers to these questions.
It is an approach that sees the cosmos as a complex web of interdependent factors, each determining the other, in a positive ecological attitude, that is more relevant today than ever before.
Music education
Sound and music education, supervised by a qualified teacher, has the main objective of developing the perceptive capacity of sound reality, providing the basic tools to enjoy the various sound-musical languages.
The various activities (listening, vocal and instrumental production) constitute a concrete experience involving the whole body: the ear listens, the body interprets through movement, the hand produces the instrumental sounds, the voice reproduces what has been perceived by the ear and the eye reads the musical writing code.
At the end of the school year and on the occasion of Christmas, the children, guided by their teacher, prepare a great show to be performed to their families.
Physical education
Through diversified physical experiences, pupils deepen the awareness of their bodies and learn to perceive them in a different way. They hone their motor skills, develop sports abilities and improve their physical condition. Complex movements and the achievements experienced in this context support and encourage the natural desire for movement and the natural enjoyment of play, team play and children are educated at Fairplay. Pupils also live and experience the importance of movement for well-being and health.
The educational Project aims at the development of motor skills and motor/coordination skills;
In the early years more space is given to the playful aspect and to the natural and spontaneous movements of the child, in the following years more space is given to team games with precise rules, knowledge of sports, in order to support the predisposition to relationship and confrontation, characteristic of the last age group of primary school.
French
After Italian, French is the first language to be introduced at primary school in Ticino. It offers the possibility not only of communicating in the near future with our French-speaking community – or the community across the border – but also prepares the basis for deepening topics in history, literature and art.
A path corresponding to the Cantonal one is outlined, especially with regard to the teaching material, so that the child can easily become part of the school system of the Canton Ticino at any time. The activities proposed prepare first of all for verbal learning; the written activities aim to memorise vocabulary and at the same time introduce spelling, grammar and text comprehension. Songs, nursery rhymes, videos, group games and small presentations or individual and group readings encourage each child to an active use of the language.
Art
The Reggio Approach is an educational philosophy based on the image of a human being with strong developmental potential, who learns and grows in relationship with other people and with technology. The educational environment called atelier offers the possibility to be in contact with different materials, different languages, different points of view, to have hands, thoughts and emotions active at the same time, enhancing the expressiveness and creativity of each student.
The atelier is an environment that stimulates knowledge: at the basis there is an aesthetic dimension of learning, that is, beauty that produces knowledge and vice versa. Ateliers are not museums, but living environments, which suggest questions and give inspiration: the answers are approached in a personal way using a method similar to the scientific one.
Science and outdoor education
The concept of Outdoor Education includes a wide variety of pedagogical experiences, all characterised by an active teaching approach, that takes place in environments outside the school and it is adapted to the characteristics of the territory and of the social and cultural context in which the school is located. The Outdoor Education programme therefore includes a variety of educational activities, ranging from perceptual-sensory experiences, exploratory experiences, to school projects that combine science and the natural world with technology (coding, robotics, etc.).
The Outdoor Education does not only refer to experiences, that take place in natural settings (school gardens, parks, farms, etc.) but also to didactic paths realised in urban environments (museums, squares, city parks, etc.), in order to guarantee a direct and concrete relationship with the real world and the involvement of the subject in its entirety (cognitive, physical, affective and relational dimensions).
STEM classroom
The acronym STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. It is a philosophy of education that embraces teaching skills and subjects in a way that resembles real life; lessons in the Stem classroom are well-rounded lessons, based on projects and surveys, with a focus on interdisciplinary learning. Here we promote innovation, creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Discover our team
Highly qualified educational staff in regular training, with native Italian and English speakers full time!
