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