Kindergarten Blog, June 11: Transdisciplinary Transportation!

It’s our last full week in Kindergarten!

The children had the chance to visit this year’s Exhibition. They learned about the process that the 5th and 6th graders went through in inquiring about their uniqueness, as well as how they can use it to make a difference in the world. Reflections from the Kindergarten children, such as “I’m lucky to be in school” or “we should never waste our food” shows the connections that they have made from visiting the booths in Exhibition.

The Yellow Team continued learning about transportation and how we can use them for creating art and playing games. 

For art, the children used the different transportation toys in the classroom to create a motion painting. They painted the wheels of the cars, buses, and trains with different colors, and used them as unconventional paintbrushes to create their masterpiece.

For PE, the children were able to make use of the safety and traffic signs that they created and used them to build a track. They used their boogie boards and played games around the track to simulate what it would be like to be drivers on the road. 

The students also had their Sports Day during their PE classes. Please watch the video prepared by Mr. Waite here: 

Kindergarten Sports Day

The Yellow Team also continued to work on their personal projects to create a form of transportation of their choice. They will present it to the class next week, and explain their creation to their classmates. 

The Yellow Team students are also ready to move forward to Preschool. This week, they worked on their Schultute, also known as a ‘school cone’, which is a tradition in Germany for students who finish their Kindergarten years, and will move forward to Grade 1 (in our case, Preschool). Traditionally, parents are invited to decorate the Schultute in school with the children, but given the current restrictions, the children started decorating their cones in school, and are asked to continue working on them at home with their parents. On the first day of Preschool, they will bring it to school, filled up with treats such as pens, notebooks, or sweets. The Yellow Team children are definitely excited to work on this, as it celebrates the end of their years in Kindergarten, as well as marks the beginning of a new experience for all of them.

Thank you for a wonderful school year, and we look forward to celebrating its closing with the children next week. 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Your Kindergarten teachers, 

Pam and Azusa

 

Kindergarten Blog, June 4: On SLCs and Personal Projects

This week’s student led conferences were a success! Thank you to all the parents for taking the time to listen to the children share what they have learned in school. Congratulations to all the children for sharing their learning journey — please give yourselves a pat on the shoulder!

Our journey in learning about transportation hasn’t ended yet.

The blue team’s rocket and astronauts suit are done nicely by the children, and they enjoyed playing with it.

The children also made a distance graph. It shows the distance between the earth and moon, Japan and Europe, and home and school. On the graph you also can see what kind of transportation people are using.

 

The yellow team have named, sorted, and discovered how different transportations work. Based on what they have learned the past weeks, they’ve started working on a personal project: to design and create any transportation that they enjoyed learning about. Some of the choices include cars, hot air balloons, boats, and ambulances!

To continue our lesson on numbers, the children have been using their estimation skills in learning about money. We’ve discovered that money has value, and that we can use them for our daily needs. We had a “sticker sale” the other day, and the children had the opportunity to buy stickers with the play money they have. Each sticker size had a value, and the children chose how much they were willing to spend. Maybe the next lesson could be on the concept of saving money, too? :) 

The children also learned more about Japanese money through coin rubbings. The children explored Japanese coins and transfered their images on paper by rubbing them with a colored pencil. The children enjoyed this activity, and have learned more about what our money looks like. 

We have one more full week left this school year, and we’re excited to make the most of it with the children before summer break begins. 

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Your Kindergarten teachers, 

Pam and Azusa

Pre-KG Blog 35 04.June 2021 FAMILY TIES

Pre-KG Blog 35  04.June 2021

FAMILY  TIES

DSKI is a small school with a big heart that is often praised for its family like atmosphere. We foster good relations with our school families and community and value our good connections to the wider community.

The children are still very young when they join the Pre-Kindergarten class, sometimes they have come from our school internal Playgroup which is taught by the same teacher in the same classroom, so transitions are made easier.

But even when the children have never been away from their parents before, they tend to grow, learn, challenge themselves and make good friends in our caring and safe Pre-Kindergarten environment quite fast.

Their class, teachers and DSKI are becoming their 2nd family !

I personally cherish and value the connections we have with our wonderful DSKI families and appreciate all the support given in our classroom and to the school. We also have a wonderful, dedicated group of parents in the PTA, the Board and as generous sponsors.

Especially in their last and current unit of “Body and Family” the Pre-KG children talk a lot about their families and their adventures together. They were very proud to show their family pictures which they displayed on the wall together with their family drawings.

This week we also had the good fortune to welcome some of our parents briefly (!!) into our classroom to check out the newly donated equipment and celebrate birthdays and progress.

The Pre-KG children have continued to make amazing dream homes for their families, improve their vocabulary and fine motor skills with the multi layered generation puzzle and made (not so) secret daddy figurines for Father’s day !

The Pre-Kindergarten teachers also have strong family ties within the DSKI school community . 

So did Hanna (Anita's daughter) read a nice family book to the Pre-Kindergarten children and Tina (Derek's daughter) came to Pre-KG to raise money for her PYP exhibition project against poverty. Nice job, daughters !

Next week will be the last FULL week for the children in their Pre-Kindergarten class and a full week it will be as we have 4(!!) new friends trialling in class.

But I am confident that this fabulous, energetic and caring class will embrace the new challenges easily !

Your Pre-Kindergarten teacher Anita Ursula Mönch

Pre-KG Blog 34 28.May 2021 BODY CONTROL

Pre-KG Blog 34  28.May 2021

BODY CONTROL

Every week the Pre-Kindergarten children have so much fun, enjoy so many activities and are learning so many new things that you might think this hardly can be topped, but then another week comes around and more amazing things are happening in our Pre-Kindergarten classroom and I am just stunned anew by the children’s energy, curiosity and readiness to learn !

As the children are exploring their subjects of “Body and Family”,  they are not only acquiring new vocabulary, but toning their fine and gross motor skills.

Some(!!) of the activities in our Pre-KG classroom this week were

• welcoming new friends into the classroom and guiding them with kindness in various activities
• creating animals, people, snowman and amazing facial features with play dough
• moving in rhythm to different songs using shakers,  
• assembling and riding the new Decathlon outdoor equipment, including scooters (with light up wheels !!) and a new bike
• using fine motor skills and eye -hand coordination to finish shape and layered generation puzzles as well as a giant body puzzle
• doing stretching exercises on the mat with Anita, plus clap, stomp and jump to children’s own ideas
• playing soccer on the green field using the new Decathlon goal 

• moving in rhythm to different songs using shakers,  

• assembling and riding the new Decathlon outdoor equipment, including scooters (with light up wheels !!) and a new bike

• using fine motor skills and eye -hand coordination to finish shape and layered generation puzzles as well as a giant body puzzle

• doing stretching exercises on the mat with Anita, plus clap, stomp and jump to children’s own ideas

• playing soccer on the green field using the new Decathlon goal

What a wonderful and very busy week the Pre-Kindergarten had again!

A very big THANK YOU to Gloria’s parents (Decathlon Group) for the fantastic and kind donation of exciting brand new outdoor equipment !

The Pre-Kindergarten class together with the whole school community are looking forward to moving even more and staying healthy and well !