Le Soleil is a French immersion child care facility open to children from infancy to preschool age in two central Boise locations. We take great care to provide a developmentally-appropriate atmosphere and activities for your child, in a setting that uses nearly 100% French. Research shows that proficiently-bilingual children have better outcomes in many areas of cognitive development when compared to their monolingual counterparts, and our goal at Le Soleil is to help your child unleash their potential!

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Le Soleil staff is trained to use ASL, or rather a simplified version of American Sign Language, to help your child understand language even earlier and to transition from the language they speak at home with you to the language they use in child care. We highly encourage the use of some ASL at home, as well, since it supports the common symbolic nature of your home language and French! Babies have been shown to use sign language at much younger ages than they are able to produce speech, which makes it easier to communicate with your young child and understand their needs, regardless of the bilingual support.

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Le Soleil is committed to supporting healthy social and emotional development for your child. A part of this effort lies in the way that our staff praises children. Research has shown that using thoughtful praise can help a child to develop their ability to deal with challenges. Our staff is mindful of the language used in praise for children, and encourages effort rather than outcome. An interesting Ted Talk supporting this theory from child psychologist Carol Dweck is linked below.

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The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) strongly endorses a play-based, hands-on approach to education for children from birth to eight years old. This position is supported by research and forms the core of our day-to-day activities at Le Soleil. Our goal is to help your young child begin to develop the skills to solve problems that will support them throughout their life.

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Our curriculum is inspired by the early learning of Reggio Emilia, Italy, a city which has created its own unique approach to early childhood education. There are a hundred different "languages" with which a child learns, and it is our job to use these many languages to engage them in learning. That means when we hold ateliers to learn creativity, we provoke children's reactions to nature and our wider community in order to find what interests them so we can better model our curriculum each and every week to serve those interests. We acknowledge that children have strong rights to autonomy and self-determination and that they are not future citizens of a democratic society, but current ones.

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Family-friendly resources

 

Cognitive benefits of bilingualism

(Harvard Graduate School of Education)

"Recent research has shown that bilingual children outperform monolingual children on tasks that tap into executive function — skills having to do with attention control, reasoning, and flexible problem solving."

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Baby Sign in a bilingual environment

(Lane Rebelo, LCSW, TinySigns.net)

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Growth mindset TED Talk

(Carol Dweck, child psychologist)

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Learning through play

(National Association for the Education of Young Children)

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The Reggio Emilia approach

(Reggio Children)