The concept of the DISD Kindergarten

Many children who move to an unfamiliar environment will already have experienced what it means to leave friends, family and their trusted home behind them. Precisely for this reason it is particularly important that we give the children a space in which they feel protected and safe. With key individuals who are there for them.

The educational stance of DISD

During their time in Kindergarten we accompany the children along part of their journey in life. The children have already travelled part of this journey when they come to us. They will bring with them impressions from these first stages along with all the character traits they were born with. The facets of their personalities, their worries, the jigsaw pieces of their worldviews, their needs, their experiences and much more. Each child brings along his or her very special “bundle”, the contents of which is reflected in his or her young personality. We take time to look at them and listen to them and in this way to continuously find out something new and sometimes something surprising.

We collect the children where they are with their “bundles”.

German as a foreign language

The children who attend the DISD come from different cultural groups and speak different languages. Around every second child in the Kindergarten grows up in a multi-lingual environment. And German is not always the first language in the parental home.

Children with deficits in the German language are given special support going by the project name “German as a foreign language” (DaF). Children overcome language difficulties through a continuous as well as a playful approach to the German language and the supplementary DaF lessons.

Our Kindergarten offers the children space to develop freely and express themselves. They experience security and trust with us and we provide them with a pleasant atmosphere as we accompany them and support them in their development and learning processes.

We want to be good companions for your child

We engage with each of our children with their unique characters. We accept them into the community as independent, self-determined partners with their individual ideas, visions and decisions. We help them to discover themselves, to say “yes” to themselves and to feel good about their lives. Your child will find us to be trusting counterparts offering them a feeling of security.

We want your child to feel at home with us.

Depending on his or her aptitude and needs your child will make contact with other children, make friends and find playmates. He or she will have fun working together, playing together, learning together and having fun together. And the children will learn to assume responsibility for themselves and the group, solve conflicts peacefully and cope with various everyday situations.

Objectives and focuses: holistic support

We make use of the learning-intensive years of your children, we promote their joy in playful learning and maintain it. The principle of Kindergarten education is to support our children holistically. Holistic learning comprises as diverse an interaction as possible between the various senses, e.g. seeing, hearing, touching and moving. At the same time this holistic approach also supports perception, concentration, retentiveness, endurance, fine and gross motor skills as well as rhythm.

The four development fields of holistic support:

• social-emotional support
• cognitive support
• motor skills support
• sensory perception

Free play in the Kindergarten

The children may choose the activities and material freely. They decide if they want to play alone or with friends. The decision on the place and length of time also depends on the children. In addition free play offers the children the opportunity to “let go”, i.e. they are given the freedom to “do nothing”. During free play the children also learn

• social behaviour,
• to use their own initiative,
• to make friends,
• to say “no”.

Through acting, observing and trying things out independently the children experience many new things and are willing to do their very best. Not a performance-oriented experience but the fun and the joy of being active are the objectives in playing freely. Creativity, imagination and social    behaviour play an important role in the various areas. They produce Creative pictures and work at their desks through designing using various materials such as fabrics, wool, scraps of paper, cardboard rolls or boxes.

Scissors, paper and painting utensils help to let their imagination run free. And in passing all fine motoric skills are exercised, like holding and guiding a pen, the correct way to use scissors, cutting in a straight line when cutting our various shapes and the folding or also tearing paper accurately.