Pre-KG 2024 / 25 Blog 20 Tiere im Wasser / Animals in the Water

Pre-KG 2024 / 25 Blog 20

Tiere im Wasser / Animals in the Water

Unsere vielen schönen Bilderbücher im Pre–Kindergarten inklusive der tollen deutschen Bücher mit vielen Informationen und naturgetreuen Bildern, geben den Kindern gute Möglichkeiten zum Entdecken und zu Gesprächen. 

So fanden die Kinder Bilder mit Waldtieren, die nahe eines Baches weilten, in dem Forellen sprangen und kamen somit ganz natürlich auf Wassertiere zu sprechen. Und derer gibt es sehr viele und sehr faszinierende ! 

The many beautiful picture books in the Pre–Kindergarten classroom including the wonderful German ones with lots of information and detailed illustrations offer plenty of opportunities for connections, discovery and discussion. 

So the children found forest animals grazing near a stream where some trouts were jumping and quite naturally the talk went towards animals in the water. And there are plenty of them and very fascinating ones! 

After looking at the books, the children took out our multitude of toy animals ( most of them from Schleich which are very detailed and look natural), made a blue pond with a blanket and started to look for the animals that can swim. 

Some were already known to the children and some were discovered, so it was a beneficial time to gain new knowledge and new vocabulary. 

The children also matched the animals to the illustrations found in the books and were very proud when they could recognize them. Wonderful matching skills, Emma and Leo !  

Then the sea animals all went from the water into another container e.g. one of our strollers and the children showed good sorting abilities and increased knowledge of which animals actually live in the water. Super sorting, Misha and Sienna !

It is fascinating to observe how children learn through play, repetition and then incorporate new ideas. 

The fishing game was rediscovered and it needs good eye– hand coordination to hook the fish on the magnet! Great fishing, Songyun! 

Well, now fishing was on the agenda and we changed the location to the EY deck where the children showed great interest in scooping out not only goldfish, but crabs and squids. They really loved this activity and became quickly good at it ! What a super scooper, Luna !    

Being winter, we limited the time, but everyone went back inside with exciting chatter and happy faces. 

We were honored to have some visitors from the Kobe City office at school that day who were very interested in DSKI and our classroom as well. 

On Wednesday we had our Whole School Earthquake drill followed by a Tsunami drill and the whole school evacuated first within the grounds, then to higher ground ( Fashion Museum upper floor area), then to the nearby local Elementary School. The Pre–Kindergarten children did a fantastic job, staying disciplined and calm and walking all the way to the other school in an orderly manner. Bravo, Pre–KG class, we are very proud of you ! 

This week again we had many friends from K1 and K2 visiting our Pre–Kindergarten classroom and helping the children learn about their subject. We would like to give a big thank you to the Nakamura family for their donation of fantastic and educational puzzles and to Masa for teaching our children patiently how to puzzle. Gut gemacht Noah und Masa ! 

I had bought a sea animal diorama which was delicate to build, but one of our little girls managed to put it together with the help of a new friend from Germany. Amazing concentration span, Sienna! 

On another day the children remembered that we had real live fish at school, so we visited our DSKI fish tanks, watched the fish and practiced math skills. The children counted three big goldfish and one,two…ten, too many little ones ! The fish even got names and one was daddy fish. 

Well, it was about time to make their own colourful fish, so each child got a fish shape  cardboard cut– out and lots of paper triangles, both of which items Ms.Anita always recycles in Pre–KG and therefore supports sustainability! 

The children loved making their own fish and surprised their teachers with a good attention span and fine motor skills which have really developed since the beginning of the school year ! A friend from Playgroup had joined the activity and did a great job, too.

Then the children’s inventiveness took over again and they played fish in the sea, swimming through the classroom with their paper fish and diving behind the rock aka blue sofa. So much fun and so much laughter. 

And some of our girls wanted to show the school’s fish their handmade one, so off they went ! 

The week was filled with fun discoveries and new learning and many friends visiting, also during Open German Kindergarten. 

Thank you all for helping the Pre–Kindergarten children learn more about their unit subjects ! 

Pi Pa Pinguin

Diese Woche im Pre–Kindergarten war wieder gefüllt mit Lachen und neuen Entdeckungen sowie den Besuchen vieler Freunde von K1 und K2, die gerne mit den Pre–Kindergarten Kindern spielen und ihnen helfen die Welt und ihre Themen besser zu verstehen. 

ATOA Kobe

Kobe Suma Sea World

Wishing you all an amazing weekend with some great discoveries! 

With kind regards, Mit herzlichen Grüßen, 

Anita Ursula Mönch 

DSKI Pre–Kindergarten homeroom teacher Playgroup / EY Deutsch & German     

German Saturday School homeroom teacher

Pre-KG 2024 / 25 Blog 19 Learning about animals in the forest

Pre-KG 2024 / 25 Blog 19

Learning about animals in the forest 

As the world of animals is fascinating and incredibly varied, the interest of the Pre–Kindergarten children in the unit subjects is great. 

The children looked again at this year’s Zodiac animal, the snake and started to check out its habitats. 

Snakes can be found in many different places, from the desert, grasslands, wet areas, mountains to jungles and forests. 

Many of the snakes in our books are depicted living in trees, so the Pre–Kindergarten children decided to build a diorama for the snakes by using a recycled box and glueing some different shades of green paper into it. 

We then talked about what other animals live in a forest and the children decided on a colourful picture of woodland animals which they tried to find from our boxes of animals. The children recognized the male deer, presumably because it resembles a Christmas reindeer with its antlers.

Unless you have visited a forest with your child or talked about the many animals dwelling in the woods, it is still a little difficult for the children to identify them, but as they were interested, we gave them a colouring sheet and pencils.

Yes, the children used pencils this time and the wonder of holding them and drawing with them rather than with crayons was almost as exciting as the picture itself. Everyone was checking on their friends fine motor skills ! 

Our treasure trove of animals of course includes farm animals as well as wild animals, so the children found different species and matched them to their puzzles, showing good recognition skills and improved vocabulary.

Ms. Priyanka also read a heartwarming story called „ How kind“ where all the farm animals help a hen get back her egg. 

Kindness first and foremost in our classroom! 

As the forest diorama was lacking trees, the Pre–Kindergarten children went to the nearby park aka our small forest to find sticks and leaves.

The weather god rewarded us with sunny weather and blue skies when the children joyfully looked for nature‘s bounty to put in the basket to bring back to school.

So much happiness and so many smiles and discoveries in the fresh air! Good job, everyone! 

On Friday the Pre—Kindergarten children worked on their diorama, placing the sticks they had found and thereby making trees for several animals. 

The finished habitat box drew great attention from other kindergarten children as well.

Rounding up our inquiry into forest animals this week was the P.E. lesson where the children imitated different movements like bears, frogs and rabbits etc. under the gentle instruction of Mr.Brabant.

Last not least the Pre–Kindergarten children and their friends from K1 and K2 as well as their teachers had a meaningful circle time in the Pre –Kindergarten room were Ms.Anita talked a little about the Kobe earthquake and Ms.Alexia presented a story in Kami Shibai style about a little tiger experiencing his first earthquake drill at kindergarten. The children listened very attentively and had some comments and questions, so hopefully they will not be anxious when we do an earthquake drill at school next week.

The timing of this story was in memory of the anniversary of the great Hanshin Earthquake. On 17th January 1995 a massive earthquake destroyed our beloved Kobe and surroundings and more than 6.400 people lost their lives. 

Some of our teachers and other members of our DSKI community had harrowing experiences and we will keep all the victims in our thoughts and prayers. 

Kindly talk to your child at home about earthquakes in a sensible way and please mention that animals and pets are also affected.

The children are very fond of animals and might be worried about their well–being. We are always amazed how caring the children are! 

Wishing you all a lovely weekend with your families. 

With kind regards, Mit herzlichen Grüßen, 

Anita Ursula Mönch 

DSKI Pre–Kindergarten homeroom teacher Playgroup / EY Deutsch & German     

German Saturday School homeroom teacher

Pre-KG 2024 / 25 Blog 18 Happy New Year! Ein frohes neues Jahr !

 Pre-KG 2024 / 25 Blog 18

Happy New Year! Ein frohes neues Jahr ! 

Happy New Year to all of you, may you and your families be blessed with lots of good luck, happiness, prosperity and especially health in 2025! 

Ein frohes, neues Jahr an all unsere Pre–Kindergarten Familien ! 

Möge 2025 Ihnen viel Glück, Freude, Erfolg und vor allem Gesundheit bringen ! Vielen Dank für Ihre Unterstützung und Freundlichkeit im letzten Jahr ! 

Thank you all again so much for your support and kindness during last year !  

According to the Chinese Zodiac which features 12 different animals, the year 2025 is the year of the snake. This animal has long been regarded as auspicious in Japan and supposedly brings wisdom, good fortune, transformation, fertility, calmness and creativity. 

The Pre–Kindergarten children were welcomed back into the classroom by their teachers and they seemed very glad to see us and their classmates again and played together right away. 

We then talked to the children about the year of the snake and all of them knew the word snake because we have been forming some of them with Playdough previously. 

As the interest was great, we started our inquiry by looking at a model snake from Schleich which the children touched and inspected diligently. They then tried to draw a snake on the magnet boards and everyone was curious about their friend‘s drawings .

After a while the children felt quite confident that they could draw their own snake, so they received copies of a beautiful New Years card I have been sent by a friend and started to get creative. Snakes in many colours, some short, some long, some coiled. Good job everyone! 

We also explored with playdough again which is such a lovely material to foster fine motor skills, imagination and conversation! 

‚ Ms.Anita, look my snake ! So big ! Small baby snake ! Mummy and baby snakes! And this snake can fly ! Wow, my snake is a bracelet.“

Many interesting ideas came about and the children enjoyed this creative time very much.

The next day we started to deepen our understanding about snakes. First the children discovered many illustrations of snakes in books ( what a surprise), after that we read „The Greedy Python „ by Eric Carle ( which we definitely will read again and again as the story is quite complex and in rhyme form ) then we created our first collage with copies of pictures.

It turned out lovely and the children asked where a snake lives after reading the story.

So we looked at a beautiful German encyclopedia called „Das große Tierbuch“ which features over 4000 animals and looked at some snake habitats. 

The children also wondered what a snake eats and searched in our Pre–Kindergarten kitchen food boxes, but their first priority was to feed their baby dolls, so we will come back to snake nutrition at a later stage. 

We had planned to do some colouring and therefore we were lucky that K1 shared a nice illustration which we also could cut, so it made a coiling snake.

As our new unit is about „Animals and Food“ , the start of the year and the snake as its Zodiac animal provided a great opportunity to tune into the subjects. 

Together with the Pre–Kindergarten team, Ms. Priyanka and Mr. Derek, I am looking forward to an exciting Year 2025 with lots of new discoveries! 

Please stay healthy and warm ! 

With kind regards, Mit herzlichen Grüßen, 

Anita Ursula Mönch 

DSKI Pre–Kindergarten homeroom teacher Playgroup / EY Deutsch & German     

German Saturday School homeroom teacher