Pre-KG 2021/ 22 Blog 27 Wrap up and Step up!

Pre-KG 2021/ 22 Blog 27

Wrap up and Step up! 

After experiencing a busy Book & Culture Week, the children participated in more exciting projects this week!

The whole of EY showcased some of their learning in the exhibition “Thinking outside the trash”. 

K1 and K2 were wrapping up their unit on materials and sustainment and displayed some of their wonderful and colourful art, writing projects and toys.

These two classes also exhibited the art they made in German class with "Materialien wie Holz, Papier, Metall, Stein oder Plastik." 

There were so many amazing things to see and the Pre-KG had lots of fun exploring the exhibition and playing with the recycled toys. Especially the car track and city, the colour bottles and the trash monsters caught their attention.

The Pre-KG children also proudly showed their parents and the school community their contributions to the exhibition, all connected to the Pre-KG unit and made of recycled materials: their autumn treasure plate fairies, their triangle butterflies and birds, their lovely sushi Hanami, their barn with bird house and their sky, land, sea boxes where they had placed their animal figurines. 

Last, not least the Pre-KG children made a Steckenpferd, a fun, stick play horse which is great to hop around on and was very much enjoyed by the children of all grades .

Thank you to all the EY teachers and children for their collaboration and fabulous creations !

During the week, the Pre-KG also continued to work on their unit subjects, adding to their knowledge of what animals eat. 

Mr.Stefan Mayr, one of our school’s German teachers, had promised to bring his dog to school, so the Pre-KG children could feed him some treats as a connection to their learning.

We first looked at many dogs in different books and tried to find out what they eat. Someone came up with the idea of meat, so the children got some meaty looking toys and found lots of meat advertised in the supermarket pamphlets. We talked about the fact that dogs also eat dry dog food.

So when Mr.Mayr came to the school gate with his dog, the children were well prepared. There was a lot of joy when Mr.Mayr kindly let the children give his cute dog (called Omochi) some dog treats.

But Mr.Mayr had not only come with his dog, but with his whole family !

Everyone said hello to his lovely wife and then the children greeted their sweet daughter Emma with lots of smiles and enthusiasm.

In fact it was very hard for them to part with her. 

Thank you, Mr.Mayr for bringing your family and your dog to school !

In class we then talked about the importance of family and

as many of our children had the opportunity this week to show their families the recycle exhibition, the Pre-KG children naturally connected the current unit of “Animals & Food” to their next unit of “Body and Family”.

I wish you all a wonderful spring break with your families and lots of sunshine !

Looking forward to hearing about all the adventures after the holidays !

Times with Family and Friends are the best!

Yours, 

Anita Ursula Mönch

DSKI Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher 

Pre-KG 2021/ 22 Blog 26 Book & Culture Week@DSKI x Pre-KG Unit

Pre-KG 2021/ 22 Blog 26

Book & Culture Week@DSKI x Pre-KG Unit

This week at Pre-Kindergarten was really fantastic and very busy, because DSKI celebrated the “Book & Culture Week”!

The responsible team of teachers as well as many of our school parents created amazing displays of various countries, showcasing our diversity and a multitude of opportunities for crafts, games, dress up, reading, photos, quizzes, story telling and even a sock puppet show.

From Monday to Friday we toured all of the very interesting displays and we learnt so many new things. 

Two of the fathers in Pre-KG (Kai’s and Emma’s dads ) are from Canada, so there was a big hello to the moose on the Canada table.

Dolls of stuffed animals and beautiful clothing also held a big attraction for the Pre-KG children at the China and Costa Rica display tables. The Panda in national costume and the pink lama were just adorable. 

So were the Pre-KG children in their national costumes !

Suzu’s father visited Germany most recently and brought back some cute snow globes as presents for the children (thank you very much again), so the children seemed to recognize the German flag which is also displayed in the Pre-KG classroom, and they were quite fascinated by the wooden station master doll. We also looked at the book from the Schwäbische Alb where Ms.Anita and Ms.Hanna live when back in Germany.

One of our unit subjects is food, so it didn’t take the children long to discover the grape jelly which represented France and Moldova as grape growing countries. 

Thank you, Ms.Oxana for the yummy treats. 

Food was also a topic when visiting the Thai booth, where pictures of delicious dishes elicited cries of *oishiso, yummy, I eat it^ from the children. Who would have thought that the children like some of my favourites?

The Philippines booth showed people in a wooden hut doing a traditional dance with bamboo sticks which the children found very interesting. Luckily we would see a similar dance later on funny socks day.

The Pre-KG children recognized their contribution to the Japan booth in form of O-Hinasama. The table and walls were beautifully decorated with Japanese art and all our gourmets were fascinated with the sushi set.

Back in the classroom, the children then created their own set of sushi as part of their unit work, all out of recycled materials (McDonald paper napkins, paper scraps from upper primary, recycled school bento boxes). The children took great care in making their individual pieces and were very proud of their realistic art.

The children further made some colourful bookmarks !

Other activities this week included an Instagram photo booth on national costume day, a “Who am I ?” picture quiz and an exciting morning with many Japanese traditional games and crafts like paper doll Sumo and colourful pinwheels. Thank you so much to Yorinobu's, Chanin's and Emma Ishikawa's mums for their enchanting contributions.

The Pre-KG classroom also hosted the story reading session, songs, a puppet show and Vietnamese dance on Thursday. Thank you so much to Ms.Chinatsu and Ms.Tu Ahn for their charming performances which held all of the EY children and teachers spellbound.

The week finished with another dress up, this time as a favourite book or movie characters and many a colourful costume was seen.

Thank you so much again to the energetic Book and Culture Week team - Ms.Elena, Ms.Faye, Mr.Leo, Mr.Lubin and Ms.Pam (in alphabetical order) for all their effort and great ideas and to all our awesome parents for their incredible contributions. We really all had a fabulous time !

Finally, on top of everything, the Pre-Kindergarten children managed to work on other unit projects, either the sky, land, sea  display or making habitats for people and animals.

They created a tent fort and a cardboard barn for the horses and birds, both of which were very popular for their great cooking and role play sessions.

You have amazing, admirable energy, dear Pre-Kindergarten children and you are the ultimate inquirers!

Yours, 

Anita Ursula Mönch

DSKI Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher 

Pre-KG 2021/ 22 Blog 25 Celebrations and Food

Pre-KG 2021/ 22 Blog 25   

Celebrations and Food

Food is a big part of our daily life.

Every human being as well as animals and plants need food / nourishment.

Some people don’t think about food a lot while others have food constantly on their mind. The Pre-Kindergarten children are getting more and more aware about the importance of food and they enjoy their homemade bentos a lot. These are full of good nourishment and love !

This week was full of celebrations and highlighted the fact that certain food is eaten at certain occasions.

We started the week with the joyful event of Karneval where the Pre-Kindergarten children invited the children from K1 and K2 to dress up and celebrate together. After a long parade through the hallway with happy children and teachers in costumes, we assembled in the Pre-KG classroom aka rainbow room for dancing and candy catching.

Well, the “food” that is mostly associated with Karneval are candies, other sweets and traditional “Berliner”, round jam filled donuts which are so yummy. In the years when we have a whole school Karneval celebration, the PTA usually gets these Berliner order made at one of Kobe’s many bakeries.

A big thank you to Kai’s parents for buying the nice sweets and crackers for all of the EY children.

The children also made wonderful original Karneval masks with sparkles !

Please have a look at the video clips to experience the different Karneval varieties of north and south Germany. 

And you can challenge yourself to dancing with your child to the fun Kindergarten Karneval song.

Das Erlebnis / Kölner Karneval

Karneval im Kindergarten

Then we had another wonderful celebration, this time from Japan. Every year on March 3rd Japan celebrates the girls or doll festival. 

The festival dates back to the Heian period when girls were given a set of dolls, O-Hinasama, representing the emperor and empress and their court. Families prayed for their daughters’ health and happiness, hoping also that their daughters would become kind, strong and courteous.

At Pre-KG we started the celebration by listening to the traditional song and then the children eagerly set up a O-Hinasama display at the entrance for the whole school community to enjoy. The children did a great job putting pieces of flowered cloth as a base and making sure the dolls were placed nicely. A big thank you to the Pre-KG children for their contributions to make school a happy place.

Ureshii Hinamatsuri

The next day the children folded their own O-Hinasama dolls out of Origami paper. Each child chose their favourite colour and design for the emperor and empress’ clothes and crafted some colourful and cute dolls.

The children also had a lovely O-Hinasama party with the special sweets kindly provided by Tamaki’s mum and Emma’s mum. Thank you so much!

To let the children make another connection to the festival, we visited the Sheraton Hotel on Rokko Island to view their beautiful tiered set of O-Hinasama dolls!

Last not least, the children interviewed their sports teacher, Mrs.Miho who had celebrated her birthday last week in our class. We gave Mrs.Miho some handmade coasters. So what did Ms.Miho eat on her birthday at home ?

It turned out that she had a nourishing tofu nabe and a delicious cake ! A great way to celebrate your birthday , Mrs.Miho !

What a fantastic week of celebrations, food, lot of new discoveries and connections to different cultures !

We are all so excited to continue the learning journey next week during Culture Week.

Yours, 

Anita Ursula Mönch

DSKI Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher