Questions & Answers

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General

The Butterflies school is privately owned and operated.

At the Butterflies we do not follow a set methodology. Instead we draw from best practices across various methodologies such as Montessori, High Scope and New Nordic Approach, which we apply to our day to day life.

The school opens its doors to all students at 8:00am and closes at 7:00pm.

The class start times are differentiated per group:

Crèche and Pre-school welcome children into the classroom from 9:00am to start their activities at 9:15am.

Primary School start at 8:45am.

All classroom activities finish at 4:00pm.

Parents can pick their children up between 4 and 5pm.

There is an option to extend the school stay:

• Extension 1 – from 5 to 6pm
• Extension 2 – from 6 to 7pm

Bilingual Curriculum

The school follows the Portuguese National Curriculum, which has been worked and adapted in order to include English and Portuguese as equal learning opportunities.

For Crèche and Pre-School, each classroom will always have teachers and assistants that speak both languages, whereas for Primary, grades 1 to 4, we have implemented a co-teaching approach where one teacher will be responsible for Portuguese while the other one will take over English teaching responsibility.

Meals

Our meal service includes a mid-morning and a mid-afternoon snack, as well as lunch.

Our lunch is provided by an approved catering company with whom we work in order to provide healthy balanced meals.

The school accommodates special diets on request.

With the exception of children attending nursery, children cannot bring their own food unless there are special medical reasons, for which a doctor’s certificate must be presented.
We aim to offer a healthy balanced diet at the school and want to minimise the possibility of allergies.

Hygiene

The Hygiene Service is only applicable to children still wearing nappies and will cease once the child is fully potty trained.

It includes disposable nappies, wipes and barrier cream.

Naps

All children that nap at school must buy one (or two) bed sheet and a blanket, which parents should take home on a weekly basis to wash.

This is so not to incur extra laundry charges, which can impact parents’ school monthly fees.

We do not force children to sleep. Instead we offer an opportunity for children to rest halfway throughout the long school day.

Admissions

This is a non-refundable fee applicable per family used to process the child’s application.

The monthly fee includes:

• All educational materials with the exception of any textbooks (primary only)

• Music, physical education, arts and LABs program

• Cambridge English

• Early Phonics program (pre-school and primary only)

• Aloha maths (pre-school and primary only)

• Summer school (except transport costs)

• Monitoring by in-house Educational Psychologist

This is a once only fee that allows us to care and maintain in good order all our equipment, such as playground, furniture, computers, library, etc.