Pre-KG 2022 / 23 Blog 32 Metamorphosis

Pre-KG 2022 / 23 Blog 32

Metamorphosis

The Pre-Kindergarten are learning about their body and they understand that they have been growing. 

“ I am bigger now, ich bin so groß, my legs are long, watashi wa okiku natta", are some of the observations they have made. But even though their limbs are getting longer, they still look mostly the same.

So when the children witnessed a complete transformation (metamorphosis) last week in their own classroom, they were stunned. The caterpillar that Masahiro had brought from his garden, became a pupa (cocoon) and then a butterfly. 

It was such an amazing event, not only for the Pre-Kindergarten, but for all of the Early Years children to see!

We took this chance to look at the charming story of Eric Carle again: "The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. We read the book and looked at the video clip both in English and German. The children learnt not only about the wonder of the metamorphosis, but learnt a lot of vocabulary. 

Die Kleine Raupe Nimmersatt

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Most of the Pre-Kindergarten children can explain the life cycle of a butterfly now which is truly astounding. 

We were lucky that the Pre-School was holding their exhibition in the hallway, so the children could learn about a variety of life cycles and animal growth.

They were surprised to learn that snakes and penguins both hatch from eggs. 

Other animals give birth to babies which grow and some of them become very big or tall.

All animals and of course humans need food, so the talk went back to eating. The children love cooking in our Pre-Kindergarten kitchen and they made a huge amount of bentos and other dishes. Our trial child Sora also helped and enjoyed playing with the other children.

The children also found a lot of the food items that are featured in the caterpillar book and matched them nicely. By now, everyone knows that all the sweets and meaty items are not good food for a caterpillar that is why he ended up with a stomachache ! 

Our Pre-Kindergarten children are very knowledgeable indeed.

During the week the children also coloured the pages with the fruits which the caterpillar eats. We practiced some counting and were so surprised to learn that one of our children can do easy additions already. 

The wooden layered puzzle featuring the 4 stages of the butterfly metamorphosis was also very popular. The children had lots of conversation about the right sequence and referred to the story book for confirmation. 

The Pre-Kindergarten children are really great inquirers with a thirst for learning! 

The beautiful butterfly that hatched in class and the very colourful one at the end of the book inspired the children to make their own butterfly.

So we took advantage of the pleasant weather and let the children discover the joy of using watercolours. Under the watchful eyes of our own big backyard caterpillar, the children used their new brushes, some water and their favourite colours to make each an individual version. 

With a straw and antennae in position their butterflies were ready to fly ! How beautiful they were!

This week the Pre-Kindegarten class had a new friend to share their discoveries. 

A heartfelt welcome to Santiago and the family Algemenor- Francom ! We are so happy to have you with us in class and in the DSKI community.

Wishing you all a weekend full of wonders and adventures !

Yours, 

Anita Ursula Mönch

Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher

Playgroup / EY GFL

Pre-KG 2022 / 23 Blog 31 Body and Health!

Pre-KG 2022 / 23 Blog 31

Body and Health!

We started the week with making the look-alike dolls with the rest of the class as not everyone had made one in the previous week. Projects like this take time as the children are encouraged to make individual choices regarding the hair and the clothing and they need help with cutting and gluing.

But they learn so much along the way - from using their imagination and creativity, improving their fine motor skills to expressing their feelings and implementing the vocabulary for body and clothes.

The children understand that we need to be clothed for warmth and protection and they were very eager to dress our many dolls in the classroom. Even though most of the children can dress themselves now, putting clothes on a doll is still a difficult task. But they tried again and again and really started to manage well. 

The children also took good care of the dolls by feeding them as they know that good food is important for our health.

Then Mamoru noticed that one of the dolls did not look too well (it had a scratch from a red marker on the head) and probably needs to go to hospital.

Clues like this give me as a teacher the opportunity to expand knowledge, so we looked at an interesting German picture book called "Gute Besserung " that shows scenes of visiting a doctor and even experiences in the hospital.

The children were very intrigued and when I asked them if they wanted to go and see a hospital, everyone said yes. Therefore we went on an exploration walk to the nearby Rokko Island hospital and looked at the entrance where the children learnt that a cross very often marks a hospital. 

Luckily everyone was healthy and well, so we decided to make good use of our bodies by dancing and rolling on the Sheraton green hill. The joyful expressions of the children says it all!

On Tuesday we talked about sports and how healthy it is for our body. When Malin said that her brother plays soccer (Michel spielt Fussball) and the rest of the class (including the teachers) loved that sport, too, we decided to pay the nearby Kobe Ladies Football Center a visit.

We are so lucky to have the training ground of the fantastic ladies team right next door. The children watched attentively as the ladies dribbled, ran and scored and we agreed that we would practice ourselves on a cooler day.

In the next days the children showed that they had learnt a lot about the bodies by drawing them using a doll as a model. I am just in awe of the drawing skills that our 2 and 3 year olds have.

The children are also very skilled sculptors, using play dough for modelling bodies, heads and faces.

Bravo, Pre-Kindergarten children for being so creative !

On Friday then, the children attended the DSKI Sponsor run with their parents on the Green Field and they all did a fantastic job. Everyone was smiling, including the weather god, who brought us cooler, cloudy weather instead of rain and scorching sun.

What a great run, everyone !

Oh….and something else happened this week, which was such a surprising experience for the children to witness. One of our boys had brought a caterpillar from his garden, which had cocooned for several days and then turned into an Ageha butterfly over night !  

The children now have learnt that bodies do not only grow, but they can also change completely in animals. 

And they need a lot of food for healthy growth !

We will use this discovery as the basis for our next week’s learning. 

Thank you to Masahiro and his parents for giving us the chance to witness this special event of a metamorphosis. 

And yes, we did let that beautiful butterfly fly out into the wide world! 

Have a restful weekend or enjoy the lively atmosphere of the 50th Kobe Matsuri on Saturday or Sunday!

The 50th Kobe Matsuri / Festival

Yours, 

Anita Ursula Mönch

Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher

Playgroup / EY GFL

Pre-KG 2022 / 23 Blog 30 On the Move!

Pre-KG 2022 / 23 Blog 30

On the Move!

The many conversations last week about the activities that the Pre-Kindergarten children do with their families provided a great opportunity to focus on movement and the body this week.

The children understand that they need their legs for walking, climbing and riding a bicycle or tricycle as well as their hands to hold onto things, but we wondered if they really knew a lot of the vocabulary and the right position of their body parts?

We started with a popular song called “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” and it was no surprise to see that most children knew this song and enjoyed moving their hands to the rhythm, but a slow version of the song revealed that the children actually point quite randomly to their body parts. 

Head, shoulders, knees and toes

After some repetition, everyone managed quite well and we moved on to a hands-on game, namely rolling a ball in a sitting position to a friend of a choice. 

This is a multi task activity: sitting, choosing, focussing, speaking, gripping a ball, rolling it and then listening to the cheers of the friend receiving it. Yes, a lot of senses involved in the good old ball rolling game. 

Tuesday was the perfect day for more “Hands-on” activities. With all of the EY teams we went to the nearby Rokko Island field to plant sweet potatoes. Even though I had talked about potatoes and shown some in the morning, the plants looked very different, just a green stem and leaves and no roots, so the children put them in the earth and then “harvested” them again and again.

After the third planting (lol), we said goodbye to our K1 and K2 friends and Ms.Kameda and the other nice ladies from the Rokko Island Beautification team and went to the Green Field. On the way we took time to smell the beautiful flowers.

Once on the field we used our bodies and lots of energy to practice running laps for our Sponsor's Run on Friday. The children showed great enthusiasm and did a good job running. Plenty of water ( yes, we brought the water bottles along) and hats kept us fairly cool. 

Still, after lunch everyone got an ice cream treat which was well deserved considering all the activity that had happened in just one morning.

To learn about their body in a creative way, this week the Pre-Kindergarten children also started a new art project with Ms.Anita who is very fond of recycling those beautiful leaflets of the Fashion Museum exhibitions. 

The children coloured one side of a gingerbread man shape cutout in original colours and then put a collage on the other side. 

This school year my idea of using photographs either for the classroom displays or for many of the children’s art work, proved extremely popular. The little paper dolls are very cute and show a lot of the owner’s character:

“I have black hair, so I need black wool. Ich möchte einen Hut mit Blumen, I want to put a butterfly ribbon, I like pink shorts and a sparkle on my T-shirt, I have short hair, but I want long hair” are just some of the comments the children made and show their ability to express themselves verbally and with creativity.

When all of these charming look alike dolls are finished, we will put them on display and later make a mobile version. Stay tuned for updates !

On Thursday we went shopping for a future unit activity which will involve making an easy treat. Before that we will learn a bit more about the body and also the face !

As it was raining on Friday, the Sponsor Run was postponed to the next week, which enabled the children to enjoy another long awaited Sports lesson with Ms.Miho and practice a little more for the Sponsor Run as well as the movements for the song Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.They also had fun on the parcours climbing equipment using all of their body,  their sense of balance and a little help from Ms.Chinatsu and Mr.Lubin.

What a great week with lots of movement and moving along with our subjects !

Yours, 

Anita Ursula Mönch

Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher

Playgroup / EY GFL