Concept and practice

How we receive and use the Berlin Education Program (BBP) and its educational areas for our methods and offers

interpretation of this directly through the body and its movement. Emotional perception and development are inextricably linked. Directly linked to this is health education, which in the long term leads to children being able to take care of their own well-being.

Healthy nutrition

Healthy nutrition is of great importance for children's development. In addition to healthy, wholesome meals, which we source fresh with a focus on ecological and sustainable nutrition, the design of eating situations is of great educational importance. Mealtimes in the daycare centers are cultural and social moments that offer space for attention and conversation (language education) and promote the development of social skills. A pleasant and calm atmosphere during mealtimes is important to us. Eating habits are positively influenced, because eating trains the senses. The children discover the different flavors and choose what they like. Children decide what and how much they want to eat and drink and are therefore involved in meal planning from an early age. Involving children in food choices provides important learning experiences and promotes awareness of their needs and independence.

Social and cultural learning

The nursery culture builds on the family culture and introduces children to the framework of the social and cultural fabric that the nursery represents and in which the children contribute with their whole personality. Various activities in the fields of art, sport, music, nature and language** create a context in which the children acquire knowledge. They learn techniques and skills that they can implement and live out with their own ideas and creativity.

Language, communication, written culture

Multilingualism: In addition to German, the main first languages spoken at our school are English, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, Polish and other languages. Interculturality: The cultures represented here are German, Turkish, Arabic, Russian, Polish, Latin American or North American, Nigerian or Syrian culture, although a concept of culture will often elude a purely national perspective. We treat the concept of culture as identity-creating and community-promoting, inclusive and transformative.

Language support

The language concept and individualised language support at our daycare centres provides opportunities for holistic and individual language development. Language education does not take place at specific times, but is integrated into everyday life throughout the day.

The daycare centre offers many play and everyday situations in which language education processes are challenged. This is an all-encompassing task of our educational work in the crèche area and with our 3 - 6-year-old children. In order to fulfil this task, the daycare team offers the children a motivating language environment, which is reflected in the choice of play materials and the design of our rooms.

Our everyday integrated language education is about language in free play, about language in the process of learning through discovery and about language in social interaction. However, the aspect of targeted language support using selected support materials is also part of our work. Many children in the metropolitan region and in our daycare centres have a migration background and do not always have enough opportunities to come into contact with the German language in their family environment. We want to offer these children targeted support in their language development at an early stage.

In terms of the focal points of their daily work, the accompanying teachers have acquired a mindful language behaviour, they use language consciously and to a high degree in an addressee-oriented, structured and correct manner (naturally also spontaneously and humorously...), so that they can be used as a guide. We want to explain this in more detail: Here we want to show which fields of work have been designed for language development in our daycare centre. What characterises the language culture in our daycare centre?

Our language role model educational staff ensure that our children:

• speak in complete sentences
• choose simple words
• pronounce words slowly and clearly
• listen and empathise
• correct appreciatively
• read aloud
• decipher characters
• organising storytelling sessions, morning circles, table discussions

Multilingualism

Children can learn languages very easily and naturally at an early age (up to 3 years). Later on, it is also easier for children who have grown up multilingual to learn other languages. Up to the age of 6, children can learn a language almost incidentally through play. This natural multilingualism is practised in many places in the world where there are different languages of origin and where different ethnic groups live together, sometimes in close proximity.

Children live in the same multilingualism from the outset and are immersed in the associated thought and value systems (immersion). In Berlin, German is the predominant language and culture. It is therefore important for the development of a resilient identity that is stable in everyday life that both the mastery of the German language and the polyglot, the migration culture, are cultivated and promoted here. The children's identity and self-confidence are strengthened through targeted language support and they gain stability in different cultural contexts - not necessarily those of their native language. The children can thus learn to recognise and appreciate different aspects of their identity and the identity of others, develop a strong and diverse self-image and become rooted in the diversity of their home town on the way to linguistic and situational fluency in more than one linguistic and cultural context. It is important for us to realise that this treasure and potential is lost if multilingualism is only practised within the family or not at all, as the children prefer the dominant language of their friends and peers and no longer use the languages of their own family, for example. For children without a multilingual family of origin, it is a great benefit to learn that multilingualism is an enrichment, as a basis for a democratic education that is effective from the outset, in which people listen to each other, in which different views and conflicts are verbalised and acted out and in which there is no room for feelings of threat or exclusion due to constructions of foreignness. This enriching experience in turn strengthens self-confidence, as one now accepts one's own speciality or that of others as enrichment and thus grows in interaction with others. This lays the foundation for mutual understanding, acceptance and trust in personality development. Culture and language are lived and transported through the celebration of festivals, books, films, theatre, music and, last but not least, through eating together. Based on this realisation and where there is a corresponding need, we are prepared to expand and promote bilingual courses in our daycare centres, such as the German-Spanish project at the Marlenchen daycare centre (see there).

Sensory perception

We attach great importance to language education through sensory perception children experience, recognise and name. They hear and listen, taste and smell, touch, feel and grasp, see and look. Through movement, they discover and improvise and learn to feel themselves and maintain their balance in the world.

Perception is the realisation of what our senses tell us. It is not only about the reception, but also about the processing of sensory stimuli in the brain. Only what we absorb and process can be verbalised in a meaningful way. What is not experienced cannot be thought by the young child and does not find its way into language. Perception, movement, language and thinking are closely interlinked. Through acting, experimenting and trying things out - through free play in general - the child finds its way to language.

Play development is closely linked to language development. Both are based on healthy sensory perception. Creative play behaviour is the basis for lively and differentiated language development. The design of the premises, appropriate play materials and experimentation with water, sand, earth and other natural materials should contribute to this, as should the weekly sports programme and regular excursions, music and movement. Each language has its own rhythm and melody. Singing, rhymes, circle dances and games help to teach the children the rhythm and melody of the German language. Learning verses and rhymes is easier when the texts are accompanied by melody and movement. For example, children turn to the rhythm, clap their hands and stamp their feet.

Questions about the level of development

Every child receives a language learning diary when they join the daycare centre. It documents the child's German language development, serves as an observation tool and offers a variety of language opportunities. It accompanies the child through the life phase of attending the daycare centre until they start school. It belongs to the child and is given to them when they leave the daycare centre - basic mathematical and scientific experience.

Mathematics is the abstract organisation of everyday phenomena, so it tends to be found at the beginning of an imaginary path from language to science. It is found in patterns, sequences, rhythms, repetitions and quantities. It offers orientation and reliable structures. Dealing with sizes, shapes, weights and quantities happens in everyday life. We collect chestnuts in autumn. They are counted and taken away (subtraction) and put back (addition), poured from one container into another (transfer ability). Confronted with the basic elements of earth, fire, water and air, the children explore the world. Clay, paper, colour, wood, metal, technical devices, objects of all kinds and all conceivable phenomena that they encounter - in this way they develop questions and hypotheses about how everything works and fits together.