Pre-KG 2025/ 26 Blog 30 Our Community is our extended family

  Pre-KG 2025/ 26 Blog 30

Our Community is our extended family

The Pre-Kindergarten children are learning more about their bodies and families in their current unit and the past weeks at school provided many examples of how a class and the school community can work as an extended family.

The Pre-Kindergarten children spend the majority of their week in class surrounded by classmates, teachers, friends from EY and other DSKI community members including siblings and parents. The great advantage of a smaller school that starts as early as Playgroup (children from one year old) is that there is often a lot of interaction across the grades including assemblies and during our many events, with the children from the older grades showing a very caring attitude towards our youngest ones, as some of them have also started DSKI in Playgroup, Pre-Kindergarten or EY.

1) Grades 5/6 Exhibition (UP/Upper Primary)

Our oldest children at school held their PYP exhibition before the Golden Week holidays with a focus on passion projects which was presented in an array of topics and some truly amazing displays. 

This exhibition demonstrates these children's learning over the years and their ability to research and present. 

The UP children showed great care and patience in explaining their projects to the Pre-KG / EY children and it was heartwarming to see these interactions. 

Some of the older children have siblings in Playgroup or Pre-Kindergarten and with parents visiting as well, it truly became a family affair. Congratulations on a fabulous exhibition to Grades 5&6, their parents, their homeroom teacher Ms.Pam and all the wonderful mentors.

2) DSKI Book Day

The book at DSKI was truly a fantastic event this year !

Not only was there a parade with everyone dressed in colourful costumes featuring their favorite book character, but the MPR stage also was decorated beautifully as a well known author of Japanese children's books was invited and held two amazing workshops for our school community. The school was also honoured with the presence of the German consul, Ms.Saxinger who read passages from a well known and much beloved classic, Pippi Langstrumpf. The day ended with a sumptous buffet and lots of laughter and conversations in the hallway. 

The EY children had nap time through some of the events, but they also enjoyed a lovely reading by Yuji's mother with smiles on their faces.

There must have been many happy faces in the wider community as well as this book day also ran a book collection drive for charity and a stunning amount of books was collected. What a great way to extend happiness! 

A big thank you to Ms.Elena, Ms.Makiko and Ms.Harumi as the Book Day team for their astounding work and vision and to all the amazing helpers in our DSKI Community of which there are too many to mention.

3) Goodbyes

Part of life is saying goodbye and it never comes easily. During the week the DSKI school community had to say goodbye to two gentlemen who from now on will enjoy their retirement.

The first gentleman was Mr.Fujita, our wonderful school bus driver for many years who was our safe guard on daily drives and helped create memories on our amazing excursions which we will cherish forever. Our Pre-Kindergarten trip to Animal Kingdom was the last opportunity to see his great care towards the children.

Otsukaresama, Mr.Fujita, we will miss you.

The second gentleman was Mr.Windmeier, our new German principal who brought with him ideas and a vision to extend our school beyond current facilities and lead it into the future. 

The Pre-Kindergarten children especially enjoyed his Christmas story reading and him popping into the class introducing new families and friends to us.

Thank you for guiding our next steps, Mr.Windmeier. Wir wuenschen Ihnen alles Gute in Deutschland und weiterhin gute Gesundheit !

4) Rokko Island Tulip field / Community Garden

The small plot of land near our school brings the children so much joy, lets them learn about growth, life cycles and seasons and connects them directly to the Community on Rokko Island.

Generations of Pre-Kindergarten children and their friends from EY have planted tulip bulbs, checked on their growth regularily and then are stunned by the beautiful tulip field in spring with the children always proudly telling their parents that THEY planted these tulips! 

This time we went to harvest the tulip bulbs which can be recycled depending on their condition and we are already looking forward to the sweet potato planting.

5) Japanese Children's Day

Kodomo-no-hi aka Children's Day in Japan is a joyful festival celebrating the growth of the children and praying for their health and happiness. Even though it is called children's Day it includes usually display items for boys like helmet and armour to balance for the girls Ohina-sama Day. The festival itself is very old , became very elaborate during the Meiji times and also features Koinobori, carp streamers representing the family which are displayed from the roof tops. 

Koinobori Song

The children sang the traditional song in class, made Koinobori and happliy took them home. 

We hope you had a good celebration with the family and friends in the Golden Week holidays - there was a very big Koinobori streamer in Harbourland where the school had a booth on 4th and 5th May !

6) Birthday Party

Birthdays are special occasions where we celebrate that a child / person was born and we are happy to have them among us.

Often the birthday party in Pre-Kindergarten is the first one for a child to hold with people other than the family and the children are always so happy to share this moment and the treats with their friends and teachers.

This time we celebrated Lynn's 3rd Birthday and we had a cheerful time with delicious fruit and crackers. Thank you to Lynn's parents for helping to create special memories !

7) Mother's Day 

"Mama" (in any language) is often the first word a young child utters and there is a phrase that says that "the mother is the heart of the home" which highlights the mother's central and nurturing role.

I have very fond memories of my own mother who passed much too young and I loved how exitedly the Pre-Kindergarten children took to the idea to make a special flower for their beloved mums. 

Every child chose a beautiful Origami paper, patiently folded it into a tulip and stuck it on a stem with a leaf. Ms.Anita helped with writing a lovely message and the children proudly showed their flowers.

The Pre-Kindergarten children are really rays of sunshine and we will keep nurturing their connections to family, friends, teachers and the wider DSKI Community.

I hope your Mother's Day was full of beautiful moments and lots of love !

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 29 Excursion with the family to Animal Kingdom

 Pre-KG 2025/ 26 Blog 29

Excursion with the family to Animal Kingdom 

This excursion has been planned for a long time and the children were so much looking forward to taking their family along, hence connecting our previous unit of " Animals and Food" to the current one of "Body and Family". 

The Pre-Kindergarten children had done a lot of research about what different animals eat and as Animal Kingdom gives opportunities to the children to feed animals or watch them being fed, this park is a fitting destination.

We started the preparation for the trip by looking at the map of Animal Kingdom and the children searched for some familiar animals and tried to find the matching animals from our vast array of animal figurines.

 It was fascinating to see how interested the children were in the maps and how well they spotted even the smallest images. 

The map gave the chance for a lot of questions as some animals were unknown to the children and in the course they learnt some new vocabulary. Do you know what a sloth is or a shoebill? Please check it out !

A trip preparation also needs good self-management skills as the children need to navigate safely around different areas and sit on assigned spots. So the Pre-Kindergarten children went on a walk to the nearby tulip field and river where they took care not to walk on the flowers and stayed in a proper distance to the water. Well done and good listening, Pre-Kindergarten children.

The children also did a wonderful job following the safety instructions during the Earthquake plus Tsunami drill this Thursday and made it orderly to the assembly point at the Fashion Museum. Bravo !

On Friday then, the class hopped on the school bus with some of their mothers joining and off we went to Animal Kingdom.

This park evolved from the original conception as a bird park and has added a variety of other animals, from familiar cats, dogs and rabbits to capybaras, penguins, to a shoebill and larger land animals like a bear and lion. There are different opinions about the capture of big species and not everyone feels comfortable seeing them held in small spaces. 

Children tend to get very excited about seeing especially big animals and it is always at the parents discretion teaching them about animals in the wild. We had wonderful sessions in Pre-Kindergarten about animals living in nature in a variety of habitats and hope to have instilled a love for nature and wildlife in our children.

Thus said, there was much excitement throughout the day and the children and parents were in awe of the bird show, with eagles and the beautiful and colourful parrots flying. The parrots took long flights high into the sky and came back to their handlers, in time for lunch.

Our little group also had a delicious lunch with sandwiches and homemade onigiri and a nice time chatting.

The class then visited the outside area, watched otters and penguins swim, squirrel in the trees and capybaras and ant eaters walk around looking for food. The inside areas provided glimpses into the Amazon and jungle animals, night creatures, busy monkeys and domestic animals. The children got to feed some animals including ducks and pet the rabbits.

There is so much to explore and do at the park (and a very enticing shop and restaurant), you easily can spend a whole day there, especially if you bring a stroller for your child to take a quick nap in between. We left at 2.15pm (14.15) and the school bus and our bus driver, Mr.Fujita waited right at the exit to take the families with some very happy Pre-Kindergarten children back to school. Everyone had such a wonderful, enriching time and after all the excitement, all the children slept on the bus.

Thank you again to the parents who could join us and to the others who needed to be absent for various reasons, kindly visit this park at your leisure as your child will surely love it.

Kobe Animal Kingdom

Wishing you many adventures and discoveries with your family !

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 28 Who belongs to my family ?

 Pre-KG 2025/ 26 Blog 28

Who belongs to my family ?

With the start of our new unit called "Body and Family", the Pre-Kindergarten children dove right into the topic of who belongs to their family.

Family (from Latin: familia) is actually a core social concept and institution rather than a purely biological fact. Wikipedia identifies it as a group of people related either by consanguinity or affinity which forms the basis for social order.

So with our Pre-Kindergarten children talking often about their mommy, daddy, brother, sister and grandparents as well as their cats, one would think that the concept of family comes to them quite easily.

Well, we started the journey by talking to the children about their family and some could name some family members, but some children found it difficult, so we set up different activities and stations for them to express themselves. 

First we revisited the photos the parents had sent of their children eating and asked what they and their different family members like to eat. The children then matched food and fruit to their own picture and added some carton cut-outs of family members and their favourite food.

This activity was a good pre-assessment to monitor if the children knew how many family members were in their family, but it showed that usually just one or two family members were indicated. The children did a fantastic job though feeding their chosen family members which showed great care !

The children then used only the carton cut-outs of their family members and almost everyone was able to find their family members and even count them ! Bravo !

Lego are always a great tool for expression, so the Pre-Kindergarten children became very creative putting their family together (including pets), they built houses and habitats for them and one child even sent his family on a plane trip!

Our specialist teachers, Ms.Azusa for music and Mr.Brabant for P.E. also helped the children learning more about their current subject by integrating songs like "Daddy Finger" or a very  active catch game called "Mommy got a letter and she dropped it..." (based on the duck, duck, goose game) and the children had a lot of fun with these additional activities.

Playdough is very popular with our Pre-kindergarten children, so they tried to make some family members with that, but this task proved quite challenging. Some of our children are still learning to roll balls which could be heads and bodies or make snakes (for arms and legs), but they are progressing well and one of our girls created a cute Minnie Mouse as a family member!

Additionally the children made a lot of playdough food - we really have a class that loves food, so let's cook again soon.

Everyone also loves books, so throughout the last two weeks we read a lot of books with the Pre-Kindergarten children and we were really amazed by their interest and attention span. We started with easy books just about mommy, daddy and the baby and then ventured into more complex stories about Dora, the Explorer and her family and The little Critters. 

These books show a variety of scenes and stories when growing up and in daily family life and the Pre-Kindergarten children were not only good listeners, but started to get active with pointing and even questions. It shows again the great value of books and reading where you can give feedback and interact with your child.

The school also celebrated Easter and the children made beautiful Easter Bunny baskets with materials donated by our kind DSKI PTA and later in the day went for a stroll in the sunshine under the beautiful Sakura trees which were in full bloom.

With the song "Daddy finger" being so popular (and important for motor skills), I introduced a digital version as well. I am known for being very reluctant about screen time, but this short song is a clever version that adds what actually each family member can do with their fingers.

Finger Family

So please enjoy it and feel free to add your own ideas, I am sure your child will love it.

Next week we will review some of our animals and have a look at the bus and the map in preparation for our trip to Animal Kingdom with the families which I am very much looking forward to !

Wishing you a lovely spring weekend and some more Sakura blossoms along the way !

With kind regards, mit freundlichen Grüßen, 

Anita Ursula Mönch

DSKI Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher 

Playgroup / EY GFL & Deutsch      

German Saturday School homeroom teacher