Claudine Olivier, a bilingual crèche à la française !
Winner - Best of Paris by Expatriates Magazine
In 2018 Claudine Pribile and her super team of child care specialists opened the first bilingual pre-nursery school of excellence in Paris. Their aim was to create a high standard of pre-nursery child care for families looking for an international environment that fosters humanistic and multicultural values for their children. Located in a bright, ground floor location in the 15th arrondissement, close to the Eiffel Tower, ‘The Village’ welcomes ten children, aged from 4 months to almost 4 years old, Monday to Friday from 8:30am to 6:30pm. It provides a safe and healthy, multilingual environment in which they can learn to live together and learn from each other (toddlers learn patience and empathy and infants are stimulated by older children). Immersed in a bilingual environment, the children naturally and effortlessly learn both English and French as they flourish in a harmonious and caring environment.
Everything about the crèche is designed to have the very best interest of the children in mind, from the toys they play with to the food they eat (fresh, seasonal, organic) and even the cleaning products used (all 100% natural). However, a childcare centre can only ever be as good as the team of people who run it, and, as Claudine explains, «The Village in the 15th has been a great success thanks to our super team, Caroline (from Belgium), Melody and Melita (from the Philippines), and Niamh (from Ireland). We have succeeded in creating an international family environment for the children who come here, combining caring, «mothering», learning and developing social skills. Creativity is at the center of our practice. More than just applying precepts such as Montessori, Pikler, Winnincot…our goal is to be or create a playground where our children will experience and discover their world ».
The crèche also provides advice and support for the parents, who are encouraged to ask any questions they may have freely. «When you’re the parent of a newborn, infant or young child you always have questions and sometimes it’s complicated to find the right ear to listen. Being a welcoming place also means doing our best to help families settling in.» Having spent a great deal of her own childhood traveling between the Cameroon, France, the Ivory Coast and California, Claudine appreciates how difficult it must have been for her parents to find supportive childcare, «I remember how hard it was for my parents to recreate their nest each time we moved. Having a welcoming place, a place to share fears or more positive feelings, would have been really helpful to them».
In the last two years Claudine and her team have achieved so much! «The Village has been such a success that we all wanted to work on a second project. In 2019 we received a lot of requests from parents living in Neuilly or the 17th so we decided to explore the West side of Paris. Our journey led us to Levallois, where we found a place that matched our criteria for a second crèche: a bright place, with natural light, close to a park, in a street with little traffic. This new crèche is just a minute’s walk from the Parc de la Planchette (Levallois’central park) which is why it was decided to name the crèche «Claudine Olivier Central Park»! At the moment the team is working hard to prepare the opening in March, when we’re looking forward to welcoming new families ».
When it comes to enrolment, there is no selection process as such for places at the new crèche, however Claudine wants to preserve the atmosphere she has so successfully created at ‘The Village’ and is therefore keen to welcome like-minded parents: «We want to welcome families that truly share our pedagogical project and who are willing to enter our Claudine Olivier family team. There are no language criteria, all children can benefit from our dual language immersion and program. We are just looking for friendly parents who want to participate in our international journey in French and in English».
