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Collège Champittet has been providing outstanding education to both local and international students for over 120 years. Our bilingual preschool adopts a play-based learning approach to spark the curiosity and creativity of our youngest learners.
With dedicated teachers, small class sizes, and the engaging environment of our new Early Years Centre, we help children build the foundations for lifelong learning success.
Inaugurated in August 2025, The Village is the newest addition to our campus and has been exclusively designed for our learners from preschool to Grade 2. This dedicated Early Years Centre gives our youngest children an inspiring start to their educational journey, with a calm, safe environment tailored to their needs.
The Village includes six bright and cheerful classrooms, in-classroom toilets, a lunchroom, childcare spaces and direct playground access. Engaging child-centred learning spaces, such as cars, a kitchen and a shop, invite learners to unleash their imagination and creativity while strengthening skills in problem solving and collaboration.
At The Village, your child will become part of an international community of learners, where caring educators and holistic daily routines provide the stability and support to grow with confidence and build skills for lifelong success.
IMPORTANT
Please note that the admission fee, as well as 8 weeks of Holiday Clubs for preschool are free of charge.
We believe that small class sizes are important to ensure that every child receives the personalised attention they need to thrive. Our preschool classes have 15 or 16 children on average, and a teacher-student ratio of 1:8.
At Collège Champittet, our teachers incorporate a wide range of playful early childhood activities to nurture our preschoolers’ cognitive, social, emotional and physical growth. These activities encourage curiosity and creativity while shaping motivated learners. Here are some examples of purposeful play and their benefits:
- Pretend play: Role-playing as animals, superheroes, or family members (develops creativity and social skills).
- Sensory play: Playing with sand or water (develops fine motor skills and sensory awareness).
- Outdoor play: Running, climbing, and ball games (develops physical coordination and social skills).
- Arts and crafts: Drawing, painting, and crafting (develops creativity and fine motor skills).
- Music and movement: Singing, dancing, and playing instruments (develops coordination and self-expression).
- Social play: Group games like hide-and-seek (develops communication and teamwork).
- Reading and storytelling: Listening to stories or making up their own (develops language and imagination).
Our preschool curriculum is taught by native speakers in French and English. We also introduce children to basic German from an early age.
We provide children with evenly split biweekly immersion in French and English led by native-speaking teachers. This ensures balanced exposure and the opportunity to naturally acquire both languages.
Our learning environment has also been designed with bilingualism in mind, with dedicated Francophone and Anglophone spaces to reinforce linguistic and cultural learning.
As a result, our Early Years students gain the confidence to think, play and communicate in both French and English, building an excellent linguistic foundation for primary school.
We offer a variety of extracurricular activities throughout the school year. Examples of current after-school activities for preschoolers include theatre, classical dance, football, introduction to music and sports discovery. Our exciting programme changes from semester to semester.
Our caring team is happy to organise before- and after-school care for children from 7:30 to 18:00 every weekday.
At Collège Champittet, we welcome all nationalities. We’re proud of the diversity of our school community, which currently includes students from more than 50 countries.
Admissions are open throughout the year, and your child can start at any time during the academic year. For preschool, there is no application fee.