Pre-KG 2025/ 26 Blog 22 Hawaii- Sea life, Hula, Toast, Art and more Culture

 Pre-KG 2025/ 26 Blog 22

Hawaii- Sea life, Hula, Toast, Art and more Culture

This week the DSKI community held its Culture Festival and Ms.Kotomi was going to perform a Hawaiian Hula dance, so we used this opportunity to expand the knowledge in the Pre-Kindergarten on Hawaii and its Sea life, dance and food.

On Monday, we got out our big German book with maps and tried to find Hawaii which was not easy, but our clever children could spot Japan on the map.

As Japan is made of islands just like Hawaii and the maritime life is a bit similar, we introduced a wide range of ocean animals to the children.

We also showed them a photo of Hawaii which features a lot of volcanic mountains, so we made some out of recycled brown paper bags and surrounded the "pools". To introduce new animal names in a quizz like manner and then let the children take the correct animal for a swim in the warm water basin is a fun activity that makes them learn easily.

Boxes are another great tool for learning and I use them often to make dioramas to play with. The children were very interested in making their own mini Hawaii and eagerly glued paper and mountains to create beautiful scenery for all those animals living in the ocean.

These dioramas were present on the tables every day and when the Pre– Kindergarten children did multiple ocean life themed puzzled they checked whether they could find the same animal on the puzzle pictures and in the boxes. 

After a while they could name quite many and were singing and dancing along to this delightful sea animal song:

Sea Animal Song

As the Pre-Kindergarten children love to sing and dance, they were really looking forward to Ms.Kotomi's Hula dance at the DSKI Culture Day on Wednesday, 11.February 2026.

A charming Ms.Kotomi showed a graceful dance with some of our cheerful coworkers and the audience looked spellbound at the movements. Thank you Ms.Kotomi for letting us dream about Hawaii for a while.

The Culture Day was a fantastic event packed with a great program of performances and food stalls with delicacies from around the world run by our fabulous PTA and parents. Thank you all so much for joining this wonderful event, for cooking and contributing and for wearing the beautiful costumes of your country.

At present an amazing exhibition is held at ATOA where I have gone on an excursion with the Pre-KG class in the past and I got hold of some pamphlets. 

ATOA Aquarium x Art

The children cut them to make a collage and then added a variety of colourful sea life. We realized that the children are getting more proficient at holding scissors and cutting papers. The results were a lovely little piece of art which the children were very proud of.

On Friday the children had two more fun activities related to Hawaii, the first one being a cooking session and making Toast Hawaii. 

I have eaten this so often in my childhood in Germany that I thought it was made there and it turned out to be true. A German TV chef created it and I think the Hawaian connection is the pineapple which was somewhat exotic in my days.

Anyway, it is very delicious and the children enjoyed making it, watching it bake in the toaster and they loved eating it! 

Yum, yum, big success ! Please try it at home, it is very satisfying !

To round up our learning, we took the Pre-Kindergarten children to the Fashion Museum exhibition of Shin Hanga. Yes, you read correctly, the beautiful traditional Japanese prints ! As I go to every exhibition before I take the children there, I found several lovely prints there depicting the Hawaiian ocean and surf. 

So off we went looking at these amazing pieces of art ( which we were not allowed to take a pictures of ) and several more with animals like carps, cats, a fox and a peacock. We did not stay very long, maybe 15 minutes as I had chosen the pieces to be viewed, but the key point is to give the children the experience of visiting a museum and appreciating art. For some of our children it was not the first time and they were focused, intrigued and very polite.

This little excursion and the whole week showed again the astounding curiosity and capacity young children have for discovering and learning new things.

I am always humbled by the children's  enthusiasm and thrilled at the progress I can see every day.

As the parents are also life-long learners and the interest in German is very high, I would like to add this clip with names for sea animals.

Please note that it is too long for the children and that they have not learnt these words yet.

Dieses Video ist für die Eltern, viel Spass beim Lernen der deutschen Wörter für die Meerestiere.

Meeresbewohner für Kinder / Eltern

Please enjoy a happy Valentine's day and in Germany Karneval is in full swing - there is always so much to celebrate in February !

We danced to this Karneval song together with the friends from K1 and K2 and everyone had so much fun ! 

Karneval im Kindergarten

This picture also features a sibling of Pre–Kindergarten child and my German co–teacher Mr.Gerrit who we had to say goodbye to this week. We will miss him and wish him and his family all the best for their future adventures.

Ich wünsche Ihnen allen ein gutes und erlebnisreiches Wochenende !

With kind regards, mit freundlichen Grüßen, 

Anita Ursula Mönch

DSKI Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher 

Playgroup / EY GFL & Deutsch               German Saturday School homeroom teacher

Pre-KG 2025/ 26 Blog 21 What do animals eat / My first book of food

Pre-KG 2025/ 26 Blog 21

What do animals eat / My first book of food

By now probably everyone knows that I am not only a big fan of books, but also of Eric Carle.

His books feature beautiful illustrations, many charming animals, catching rhymes and they make meaningful connections between different subjects.

After having delved deeper into the subject of fruits in the past week, this book gave the children the perfect opportunity to connect fruits and food to animals. 

I first showed the book to the children and made a preliminary assessment by asking questions like: Does a horse eat meat ? Does an elephant eat apples ? Does a bear eat fish  ? There is always an interesting reaction -“ No” - by the children to the last question as not many children know that bear eat fish.There is a great clip by BBC of salmon catching fish in the river narrated by Sir David Attenborough who is famous for his nature documentaries and who will be a 100 years old this year!

Grizzly bears catch salmon

The children matched the cards I made from the book by finding and naming animals and the corresponding food. There can actually be different options for an animal, so does an elephant eat apples, carrots and peanuts as well as watermelon and other fruits. 

To expand the knowledge and make the learning even more visual, we watched another short clip of elephants having a fruit buffet in China and the children found it really fascinating.

Elephants enjoy fruit buffet in China

On another day the children matched the cards on our big magnet board and they did an amazing job !

Additionally we asked the children to try and match our animals figurines with the toy fruit and vegetables. They really enjoyed this 3D activity and epecially loved feeding the rocking horse that currently lives in our classroom. 

Playdough is such a useful tool not only for improving fine motor skills, but for the creativity it can unleash in children. The animal figurines came out again and this time the children created fruits with playdough. There were great bunches of grapes rolled and we were amazed by comments like "Elephant eats watermelon, horse eats apples" in full English sentences ! The children have really improved their language skills.

We also hung up the photos the parents have sent of their children feeding animals and the children were very excited about the display. We are still working on it and I will include a picture in a future blog.

With so much talk about feeding animals, the children wanted to do a real action and then we remembered that we luckily have some fish at school. So off we marched to the aquarium in the hallway and our newest friend in class, Kasane, was very keen on feeding the big fish and the baby ones ! Great job and a big welcome to Kasane and her parents to the Pre-Kindergarten.

This week, on 3rd February, we also celebrated Setsubun at school, albeit a very young child friendly version without chasing an oni on site.The oni masks were displayed on the board in the hallway and were cute enough for the children to want to take them home.

Everyone also got a little bag of beans to take home and we watched a nice clip of the song celebrating this old Japanese festival.

Setsubun Song

Even though this festival is usually celebrated to mark the change of seasons, we are still very much in winter and it is supposed to snow again, so please stay warm and healthy !

I am looking forward to seeing you all at our DSKI Culture day next Wednesday! 

With kind regards, mit freundlichen Grüßen, 

Anita Ursula Mönch

DSKI Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher 

Playgroup / EY GFL & Deutsch               German Saturday School homeroom teacher