Kindergarten

Greetings

Dear parents,

As your child enters our nursery, this is usually the start of the first longer separation and the first detachment from the parental home. Your child is starting a new phase in their life. They are curious, open and want to conquer the world.

We want to guide your child along their way, providing a momentum that your child can take on gladly. We want to strengthen their strengths and weaken their weaknesses. Because it is only with a healthy self-confidence that your child can open themselves up to new things, learn new things and thus master the course of their life.

The nursery at the DSN is a meeting place for children from all over the world. It enables and promotes interpersonal, cultural and verbal interaction between the children.

We look forward to seeing you! Because we keep our door and our ears open to you and your child.

Best wishes,
Kindergarten

About Us

The international kindergarten of the German School is a bilingual full-day kindergarten for children between 18 months and six years.

In the school year 2022/23, 124 children attend our kindergarten, who are cared for in 7 groups - each by a German and an English-speaking educator/assistant. The kindergarten is open from Monday to Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and on Fridays from 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. (half-day).

The goals and focus of our pedagogical work are social education, language education, and nature as an educational field. We want to ensure that the development of each child is optimally supported through a differentiated and individual style of upbringing, education, and care.

As a German kindergarten abroad, we are strongly challenged to orient ourselves to the different family life situations of the children. The basis of our work is to create a solid social environment, both for children who grow up bilingual or trilingual and for German-speaking children who are influenced by the (frequent) change of residence. In all our activities, we place special emphasis on the teaching of social values and place the development of personality and the formation of social contacts at the center of our pedagogical activities.

The children entrusted to us should grow up as "little" personalities; playing and learning without stress and worries. Nature as a field of education and daily experiences with nature on the school grounds or during excursions contribute significantly to this in the daily kindergarten routine.

The Kindergarten Team

NOHK

Olbert, Nora

Head of Kindergarten

nora.olbert@germanschool.co.ke

IW

Wangechi, Idah

Deputy Head of Kindergarten, Lions

idah.wangechi@germanschool.co.ke

CM

Milej, Cordula

Preschool & German Coordinator

cordula.milej@germanschool.co.ke

Curriculum

For the classes of 2-3-year-old and 3-6-year-old children, there are individually tailored learning processes, which are adapted to the heterogenous, bilingual groups and the GFL groups.

  • LEARNING

    Basis for learning and achieving together and individually

    • Cooperation
    • Independence
    • Developing strategies and solutions independently
    • Taking on responsibility
  • LANGUAGE

    Language development and communication

    • Learning to listen
    • Being able to express yourself
    • Entering into a verbal exchange
    • Being able to express your own experiences and feelings and actively participate in lessons
    • Retelling
    • Grammatically correct use of speech
    • Learning to recognise letters (visually and aurally)
    • Exercises with syllables and sounds
  • SOCIAL, EMOTIONAL AND PERSONALITY EDUCATION

    Getting to know yourself, the other children and adults and forming relationships

    • Treating yourself and others with esteem and respect
    • Dealing with praise and criticism
    • Learning to recognise and express your own feelings
    • Finding your place in the group
    • Resolving and overcoming conflicts
    • Understanding and following the rules of being together
    • Values and standards
    • Learning to appreciate your own performance
  • HEALTH EDUCATION

    Diet and movement in a health-promoting environment

    • Getting to know your own body with confidence
    • Diet education
    • Sufficient movement in a suitable environment
  • GYMNASTICS, RHYTHM AND MOVEMENT EDUCATION

    Experiencing and developing your own body and what it can do

    • Promoting agility when interacting with your own body
    • Developing strength
    • Learning about devices
    • Moving to music
    • Developing rhythm
  • EARLY MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

    Playing games involving numbers in day to day life and targeted learning and understanding of numbers and quantities

    • Counting
    • Putting things in order
    • Sorting
    • Simple arithmetic
    • Learning to recognise numbers
    • Learning about various shapes
  • ENVIRONMENT, NATURE, CULTURE

    Where do I come from? Where do I live? How do other people live?

    • Discovering the school environment near and far
    • Experiencing nature with all five senses
    • Learning about plants and animals
    • Learning about your own culture, the culture we live in and other cultures
  • PHYSICAL EDUCATION

    Experimenting and exploration

    • Recognising the four elements
    • Learning about materials and their features
    • Experiencing and being amazed by phenomena
  • MUSICAL EDUCATION
    • Singing
    • Listening to music
    • Implementing music in the daily routine as a means to an end
    • Learning about various music styles and pieces of music
    • Making and composing music yourself
    • Music as a source of inspiration for painting, dancing, etc.
  • ARTISTIC EXPRESSION AND EDUCATION

    Working with various materials, techniques and utensils on prescribed tasks and for individual expression

    • Drawing
    • Colours
    • Painting with various utensils
    • Crafting and designing in two and three-dimensional space indoors and in nature
    • Working safely when using tools
    • Learning about artists, their art and their lives
  • MEDIA EDUCATION

    Working with technical devices and paper media

    • Discovering picture and non-fiction books and learning to use them as a source of information
    • Learning to operate the devices available where appropriate (e.g. CD player, computer, camera, etc.)

Schedule

The DSN Kindergarten is aware that a structured and regular daily routine is of great importance for the children. With this in mind, we teach the children rules and norms that are very important both in contact with each other and on their discovery tour.

The children have the opportunity to play freely, move around, and be loud. They also have the opportunity to retreat and rest according to their needs and interests. Through this structure and a variety of activities, the children learn both in social interaction and individually. Our daily routine with its rhythm, structure, and shared activities gives the children orientation and security.

The children entrusted to us should grow as "little" personalities; playing and learning without stress and worries.

Nature As A Field of Education

UNICEF (The United Nations Children's Fund) describes the right of every child to live and play in a stimulating and healthy environment. Nature stimulates the child's development in every way. We, therefore, see nature as an important aspect of a child's development.

Nature offers us a variety of materials and objects as well as a large space to explore and discover independently. Our children learn about flora and fauna and can give free rein to their imagination with the natural materials they find. In harmony with nature, abilities in many areas of development are strengthened in a very natural way. These include motor, sensory, social, and emotional development.

This is implemented on the one hand by the excursion of two of our groups once a week to the Karura forest in Gigiri. There we can observe birds and butterflies, get to know trees and plants, work with natural materials and be one with nature.

But also for the other groups, once a week is our nature day: we do handicrafts only with natural materials, and we play and learn, for example, how to take better care of our environment and how to protect it.
All our groups take part in these activities and the children are offered another opportunity for interaction between the big and the small. The children entrusted to us should grow as "little" personalities; playing and learning without stress and worries. Nature as a field of education and daily experiences with nature on the school grounds or during excursions contribute significantly to this in the daily kindergarten routine.

German As A Foreign Language

In our language program, we have set ourselves the goal of taking into account all languages relevant in kindergarten and identifying the functions of these languages in the overall context of kindergarten. We thus support the multilingualism of the children, because we think that school should function as an educational island and we want to promote intercultural competence. For the concrete didactic-methodical design of the foreign or second language lessons (in our case German), the learning groups are composed of linguistically heterogeneous. The teaching and acquisition of several languages do not take place unconnected to each other but are oriented towards the goal of multilingualism as a competence.

Language instruction in kindergarten takes place once a week in kindergarten groups for all children. In addition, the preschool children have lessons three times a week with the preschool coordinator and/or DaF coordinator in small groups of up to 8 children. Once a week, all preschoolers meet to specifically learn and reinforce social-emotional skills in a group context. Learning takes place through play, motor skills, and all the senses. Our preschool teachers have an

Additional qualification in the field of DaF/DaZ and can therefore respond professionally to the needs of the children. In addition, there is a close exchange between kindergarten and elementary school so that the transition to the next stage of education can take place as smoothly as possible. Our goal is to create language profiles at interfaces such as school entry, including questionnaires and interviews for parents, self-assessment of the child, records of observations, and competence checks.

Preschool

Our preschool year aims to optimally prepare the children for the first grade in the German school system. Our objective is to give each child the necessary skills and abilities on their way that they need for the first grade. The preschool is taught in German.

Preschool is taken in various scenarios:

  • In small groups in the classroom under the supervision of the class teacher
  • In small groups of students from different classes with the preschool coordinator and the GFL coordinator
  • As one big group once a week for social purposes
  • As one big group on excursions, at events
  • In the last few months, the future teaching staff are also included

We concentrate on the following areas for preparation:

  • Emotional skills - developing self-confidence, emotional stability and postively accepting new tasks
  • Social skills - being open towards other children and teachers; communication on various levels
  • Motor skills - practicing gross and fine motor skills, self-control
  • Cognitive skills - recalling information, being able to follow instructions
  • Listening and understanding - in context in the German language, as a basis for learning
  • Concentration and focus - concentrating consciously, staying on task
  • Independence and self-awareness - taking on responsibility and having self-confidence to achieve the objectives of daily learning

How do we achieve these goals?

  • Through play and guided activities, the children encounter the alphabet, start to understand grammar and can grasp quantities
  • Communication between the teaching staff to meet each child where they are
  • Through project work, we take into account the children’s needs and interests and thus guarantee enthusiasm
  • Through positive feedback, encouragement and a teaching plan, which is adapted to their abilities and yet is appropriately challenging
  • Individual observations, which support children in their needs, an external member of teaching staff is by our side in the event of special needs

We set out to support each child individually and unconditionally and thus to enable the children to get a good start in school.

The German school system no longer has a strightforward preschool. Instead the preschool children remain in their usual groups in the nursery and participate in regular activities to prepare them for school. The preschool children meet with their teacher on a weekly basis and she leads them in writing exercises to support pen holding and fine motor skills, language and logical tasks or social skills training. The preschool should prepare the little school starters in a targeted and sensitive way for their future school day. For example, this includes getting to grips with being in a group, practicing motor skills, which are important for writing, sitting still, listening and talking, a road traffic lesson and much more. Fears of the unknown should be overcome and excitement and enthusiasm for learning and for school awakened. A few months before the official end of the time at nursery, there is an enrolment assessment. This should test the motor, physical and mental development of the child. This enables us to determine whether they can withstand the school day. If a child is not yet ready to start school, this is no cause for concern. It simply means that they require another year to prepare. Some children simply take a little more time to develop - and if we allow them this time, they often hit the ground running later! Making a child start school too early would be problematic, because the child would then be constantly overstrained and thus very stressed. If the child is not as far ahead as most children their age with language or in terms of socialisation (making friends, not interrupting, overcoming shyness) especially, we recommend extending the preschool period or nursery to support the child in these areas.

Afternoon Provisions

Extracurricular activities

Our kindergarten offers various afternoon activities between 14:00 and 15:00. Each activity is accompanied by a specialist coach and an educator.

Some of the activities offered are:

  • Arts and Crafts: Arts and crafts make the earning process fun for kids by using different methods and materials.
  • Athletics: This program aims to promote a healthy lifestyle and improve fitness in a child-friendly and fun way.
  • Cooking: This activity is offered twice a week due to popular demand. Teamwork and a lot of patience are required to get the food ready.
  • Swahili: Since our school is located in Kenya, where Swahili is the second spoken language, we also work to introduce the children to the Swahili culture. This enables them to express themselves in their environment and surroundings.
  • Needle, thread and wool: The main goal is to promote and develop fine motor skills. We also work on strengthening concentration and patience
  • Football: The children learn motor, cognitive and social skills through soccer. Through the different exercises, coordination, sense of balance and agility are trained.
  • Gymnastics: Here the children get to know their bodies better and train their coordination skills.
  • Kindergarten Contact Information

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