Pre-Kindergarten 2021/22/23: November 2023

Friday, November 24, 2023

Pre-KG 2023/ 24 Blog 13 Fun with Colours and Shapes

Pre-KG 2023/ 24 Blog 13

Fun with Colours and Shapes

Since the beginning of the school year the Pre-Kindergarten children have been on a journey discovering the world of “Colours and Shapes” and while the learning never ends (even for adults), we have started to wind down our unit with some special activities.

The week started with a fabulous birthday party for Matias whose whole family attended the celebration.

The Izquierdo/ Nakazato family are very creative with making colourful pinatas and they did not disappoint: They brought a beautiful yellow pinata in the shape of a CAT shovelcar, much to the delight of his sister Veronica and the Pre-Kindergarten children who tried to hit the pinata, first reluctantly, then with more energy and finally could get the bounty of cookies und Gummibärchen. As there were so many goodies, the class happily shared with their friends of K1 and K2.

The children also received lots of toys and each a beautiful felt ornament handmade by Matias’ grandmother. Happy 3.Birthday, dear Matias and thank you to the family for all their love to the Pre-Kindergarten.

To get into the mood for the birthday, and understand the concept of breaking a colourful pinata with a stick, the class watched a catchy song called “Rompe la pinata” . We also used instruments to move along to the song and the shakers were very popular.

Rompe la pinata

So on Tuesday, the Pre-Kindergarten children got to choose their favourite colour ball from a selection and then as many colourful beads as they wanted to make their very personal shaker which they used to joyfully dance along to the pinata song.

After that we got ready for outdoor unit exploration, starting with shopping for our unit baking on Friday.

The Pre-Kindergarten children are always given plenty of opportunities to interact with the Rokko Island community, so they have learnt to collaborate well and have become quite principled. They did a fantastic job finding and purchasing the flour mix for our waffles and behaved very respectfully in the shop.

To practice for the Christmas event, we then went to our special outdoor stage where the children sang and performed and afterwards had a well deserved treat.

There was more practice for the Christmas performance on Wednesday, this time on the outside deck and in the Multipurpose Room with all the friends of K1 and K2.

The children also hung their beautiful handmade Christmas ornaments on the school Christmas tree and they were the first ones to do so.

On Thursday we had OPEN DAY at DSKI and many visitors. The Pre-Kindergarten children were quite unfazed by the amount of new faces coming to their classroom and showed amazing focus on their subject work.

We had prepared a worksheet and lots and lots of different colourful shapes. The children showed good knowledge and great creativity - by first matching, shapes, then building different images like robots, rockets and submarines out of shapes and finally by connecting two corresponding shapes using a crayon. Well done, everyone !

Finally on Friday, the class got ready for their baking activity. With the help of their teachers, the Pre-KG children happily mixed pancake flour with eggs and milk, poured it steadily into the waffle iron and waited patiently. To their delight, the waffles turned out very well and yes, they were squares. Everyone enjoyed the tasty treat and some lucky teachers had big smiles on their faces, too.

Another fantastic week of learning in Pre-Kindergarten while having fun and sharing adventures with friends and the community.

Have a good weekend !

Ein schönes Wochenende !

Sincerely,

Anita Ursula Mönch

DSKI Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher

Playgroup / EY German

Friday, November 17, 2023

Pre-KG 2023/ 24 Blog 12 Schneeflocken / Snowflakes

Pre-KG 2023/ 24 Blog 12

Schneeflocken / Snowflakes

Der Herbstzeit folgt die Vorweihnachtszeit und manchmal änderen sich die Temperaturen sehr schnell. Hier in Kobe ist es noch recht lange warm, doch nach Sankt Martin üben wir dann gleich mit unseren Kindern Weihnachtslieder und “Little Snowflake” sowie “Schneeflöckchen, Weissröckchen” stehen dieses Jahr auch auf dem Programm.

Schneeflöckchen, Weissröckchen

Von den Liedern inspiriert griffen wir die Form der Schneeflocke diese Woche als Leithema auf.

Die Kinder starteten mit einer Schneeflocken Bastelei als Schmuck für unseren Schul Tannenbaum, machten sich auf die Suche nach Schneeflocken auf Rokko Island, malten Schneeflocken auf den Schulhof und versuchten die richtigen Bilder auf ein Schneeflocken Memory zu legen.

Weiterhin wurden die Klasse Teil einer tollen Trommel Vorführung, feilte an ihren Puzzle- und Baukünsten mit diversen Konstruktions- materialien, machte ihre Herbst Mandalas fertig und gestaltete die Pinwand am Eingang mit ihren wunderbaren Arbeiten.

Nach so vielen interessanten Aktivitäten haben sich alle ein entspanntes Wochenende verdient !

We are moving from autumn to winter, but temperatures in Kobe are still fairly high, so it is hard to believe that we are already in the Pre-Christmas season.

Once DSKI has celebrated Sankt Martin, we start practicing Winter and Christmas songs with the children and “Little snowflake” and the German song “Schneeflöckchen, Weissröckchen” are on the agenda as well.

Little Snowflake

Taking a hint from the songs, we devoted this week’s learning to the shape of snowflakes.

Snowflakes are very fascinating and you can really not replicate them as no snowflakes are the same which is mind boggling.

Quote: Every snowflake really is different from one another. You might find some that are exceedingly similar (particularly at the beginning of a flake's development) but fully formed snowflakes are indeed structurally different, if only by tiniest of degrees.

The children started by making snowflakes with wooden sticks coloured with crayons, glued together and decorated with a pompon of choice.

The resulting snowflakes are adorable and will decorate our school’s Christmas tree ready for the lighting ceremony.

The Pre-Kindergarten class also went on a quest for snowflakes on Rokko Island which seemed an impossible task, but much to their delight, the children found some cute ones at the nearby shop.

On our walk, we also discovered a beautiful snowflake / star on the ground that consisted of a variety of shapes. The knowledgeable Pre-Kindergarten children knew them all, great job !

Songs and music are always part of our school and kindergarten life, so we were absolutely thrilled when our music teacher Ms.Azusa collaborated to have a famous drummer visit the school. Mr.von Baron is the father of a former DSKI student and presented us with a fantastic drum journey around the world. His performance was so interesting and got us all clapping ! Thank you so much !

The current Pre-Kindergarten class has really taken to puzzles, finishing increasingly challenging ones every week. The children also are constructing more and more complex structures, honing thus not only their hand-eye coordination, but math skills and their memory.

Do you know the game “Memory” which was invented in its present form by the Ravensburger company in 1959? Every German household owns it, often even a dozen varieties or more.

The objective is to match two same cards from many, each player turning over two at the time (from the bland side) and then memorizing the spots with the same pictures, thus gaining a pair with a good memory.

To work on the children’s understanding of same and different (a math concept) we used the Ravensburger Bear Memory for finding and matching bears (picture side only).

The next step was matching cards of different snowflakes to a set of pictures which proved quite difficult as the snowflakes looked very similar.

But the Pre-Kindergarten children displayed great zest for this new challenge and showed a good sense of cooperation by helping each other with the task and then patiently trying again by themselves.