Pre-Kindergarten 2021/22/23: Pre-KG 2022 / 23 Blog 12 Wrap up

Pre-KG 2022 / 23 Blog 12

Wrap up

The word wrap up conjures an image of a child wrapped up in a warm coat or blanket on a cold winter day, so it is fitting for this season.

It also means to cover something in paper, so another image that comes to mind are the lovely, colourful Christmas presents under the tree wrapped up with love and thoughtfulness.

And finally, the word “wrap up” can also mean to conclude or finalize something.

In any case the word is a perfect match for this week in Pre-Kindergarten as the Pre-Kindergarten children started to bundle up against the cold, continued to wrap a lot of candy canes for our Christmas market and last, not least wrapped up their first unit about colours and shapes under the transdisciplinary theme of “How we express ourselves “.

The idea was that colours and shapes help us express ourselves and the children inquired into different colours and shapes including favourites and created art work using various media as well as different manipulatives.

So we started the week with some provocations to see how many shapes the children can remember and then settled on a seasonal shape - a star - to use creativity in colouring.

The children also learnt the meaning of opposites, big and small, soft and hard.

While both sizes of stars were beautifully coloured, we made the smaller version into a magic wand which proved very popular and turned both teachers temporarily into frogs. Luckily the children changed us back into humans !

On another day, the children were assessed on their colour sorting skills, using our basket full of colourful magnets which they separated into bowls with corresponding colours.

Sorting is a very important skill in math and it helps children develop a range of thinking skills as well as problem solving.

For differentiation, a more advanced task was connecting same shapes of the same colour on a work sheet which was amazingly well done by the children using a crayon with good grip

An additional activity this week was making a Nikolaus ( the German Santa Claus or better, the original one ) using a triangle shape and a circle. Much fun was had and the children were rewarded by Nikolaus with a yummy mikan or Mandarine or whatever that lovely citrus fruit is called in your language.

The week also offered the chance to put those tulip bulbs under wrap (pun intended) ! The Pre-Kindergarten children joined K1 and K2 on their mini excursion to the nearby Rokko Island field to plant the tulip bulbs, so we can enjoy the beautiful tulips again come springtime.

Never one to miss a great art exhibition, I also took the children to the Kobe Artist Museum to see the colourful prints of Mr.Hide Kawanishi, one of my favourite Kobe artists whose beautiful printed postcards already charmed me when I arrived in Kobe many years ago. We were not allowed to photograph the exhibits, but the children were very intrigued by the prints and printing plates and they were very excited to find the elephant and the clock of the poster inside the museum.

The children rounded up their inquiry into colours and shapes by creating more beautiful star. bell and heart shaped ornaments which will surely delight the recipients and hopefully take the spotlight on many a Christmas tree.