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

Pre-KG 2025/ 26 Blog 20 Fruits salad – Obstsalat

 Pre-KG 2025/ 26 Blog 20

Fruits salad – Obstsalat

Over the last two weeks the Pre– Kindergarten children deepened their knowledge about a certain group of food : the much beloved fruits ! 

The children started with a matching game, using a multitude of cards depicting fruits and vegetables and then matching an item from our food baskets in the classroom. This activity provided a wonderful opportunity to expand the children’s vocabulary by including less known words like eggplant and leek. 

On another day the children created their own fruit stick choosing their favourite cut out fruit and the result looked amazingly real and delicious. 

We decided that the children should soon taste real fruits, but in order to prepare them the children first started to practice cutting with our pretend plastic and wooden fruit in the classroom kitchen.

This activity proved very popular and not only did the children review key vocabulary, but they honed their cutting skills and learnt how to hold a child safe knife properly.

The children then chose print out images of their favourite fruits and coloured them, showing that their fine motor skills are improving as they have an increasingly sure grip on their pencils. 

We also watched a little catchy fruit song which encourages the children to eat fruit ! 

Fruit Song for Kids

With so much learnt about fruits the children were looking forward to a collaborative activity with K1: cutting real fruit and making fruit salad! 

We assembled in the K1 classroom and Ms.Miho, who kindly had bought the fruit , showed and named each one !

We had bananas, mandarine oranges, strawberries and apples or in German – Bananen, Mandarinen, Erdbeeren und Äpfel.

The Pre–Kindergarten children came well prepared and could cut the fruit into bite size pieces. And as these pieces looked so appetizing, they were gone into their tummies before mixing them for a true fruit salad.

The Pre–Kindergarten and K1 children get along really well and both classes were all smiles during this collaborative unit time. As K1 is learning about the 5 senses, there were also questions by the teachers about look, touch, smell and taste of the fruits and many children proved knowledgeable. Great job, everyone ! Und alle Früchte waren sehr lecker ! 

On Friday morning the Pre– Kindergarten children attended the assembly of Grade 3 in the MPR and amazed everyone with their astonishing attention span ! Grade 3 did a fabulous job educating us about community helpers and the assembled school community really enjoyed the learning journey. 

To complete two busy weeks, the Pre– Kindergarten rounded up their learning by finding out where to actually buy the fruits from and went on a research walk to the Sheraton Marche. This is a popular shop with good, local produce and many items were sold out, but the children were happy to spot some lemons, strawberries and a variety of vegetables. 

What a great journey inquiring into fruits ! 

The children are surely ready to tell you about their findings and we are looking forward to seeing all of you next Monday at the 3– Way Conferences ! 

Wishing you a good weekend, 

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 19 Old McDonald had a Farm

 Pre-KG 2025/ 26 Blog 19

Old McDonald had a Farm

This is one of the most popular songs about farm animals and the sounds they make, but did you know that its origin traces back to an English playwright in 1706 who used it originally for an opera?  

The song as we know it today was established around 1925 and there are many online versions now. When I first learnt the song from lyrics and by ear there always were a dog and a cat included which nowadays seem to be sometimes missing in video clips. 

As for the animals featured these are typical farm animals from the UK and Germany as well as other countries around the world. Depending on where you are from, you might or might not have seen some of the animals roaming around in fields or on a farm. 

Quite many of the books in Pre–Kindergarten show these animals and we were the lucky recipient of additional animal themed books through the kind donation of Mr. Gu. Thank you so much for this wonderful gift ! 

Above charming cardboard book „ On the farm“ was included and right away it was a big hit with the children. 

We also have a big assortment of figurines to match and roleplay with and they are very popular with the children in Pre–Kindergarten class. Having made initial connections last week, starting with horses and other farm animals, this week the children deepened their knowledge by singing the old McDonald song, acquiring more vocabulary and doing a variety of related activities. 

In the Japanese language, animal babies usually have the parents word combined with the word child ( ko) as in dog ( inu) and puppy (Koinu) or cow ( ushi) and calf ( koushi), but as you could already see from these examples, the English words for adult animals and baby animals are quite different and so are the ones in German. 

Please feel free to watch the short clips with your child and sing along, but of course the parents real voices are always a winner.

Old McDonald in English

There even is a German version now, which I include for all our parents who are interested in the language.

Old McDonald auf Deutsch

The Pre–Kindergarten children named some of the farm animals and matched them on a little worksheet which they coloured later. 

They also used playdough to form animals and we saw some great progress in rolling snakes and making snails. 

During music lesson on Tuesday, the Pre–Kindergarten children had a surprise visit from Mr.Derek who brought his guitar and rendered a life version of „ Old McDonalds“. The children listened in awe and then could have a hands– on try at strumming the guitar!  What a great connection to our unit and fabulous experience. Thank you so much, Mr.Derek ! 

The Pre–Kindergarten children have also made astonishing progress at puzzling and constructing. In the classroom we have many puzzles ( including from the German Ravensburger Company) with a varied degree of difficulty and as they have beautiful illustrations we used them for matching, but then the children wanted to puzzle them and they finished 33 pieces! They also created amazing farms, houses and castles with the magnet shapes ! 

Most of our animal figurines are also from a German brand called Schleich. They are famous for being very detailed with correct proportions and look true to life. We ordered some more and the children were very happy. 

There are some farmer and caretaker figurines which are perfect for role playing as the children are also learning about the food different animals eat. 

Please let us know whether your family has pets and what they eat or whether your child has had some experience feeding an animal and we will gladly include it in our learning. A photo would be appreciated, too.

Some popular animals to be fed either on the farm or in the wild are ducks. They can be found on many lakes and rivers around the world and we sometimes can spot them on Rokko Island. To make a connection to our unit, the children went in search of the ducks and even waited by the river for them to appear from under the bridge, but on that day none was in sight.

There is another well known song about five little ducks wandering off from their mother, but then coming back for a happy reunion.

We have had some passionate reaction from children in the past years when the last duck disappeared and the mother was sad, so please make sure your child watches the happy ending. 

Five little ducks

Hopefully we will be able to make another excursion with the Pre–Kindergarten class in the near future to see and feed some animals. 

The week ended with two activities designed by our specialist teachers. 

In P.E. with Mr.Brabant the Pre–KG children made different farm animal movements: they hopped, waddled and galloped to match bean bags into the same colour hoop – and they had so much fun! 

In the afternoon then they enjoyed an art lesson guided by Mr.Lubin where they explored water colours as a medium and created colourful landscapes ! 

Another exciting week at Pre–Kindergarten full of discoveries, playful learning and lots of meaningful connections! 

Wishing you a good weekend, 

With kind regards, mit freundlichen Grüßen, 

Anita Ursula Mönch

DSKI Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher Playgroup / EY GFL & Deutsch               German Saturday School homeroom teacher