As I said last time, we're coming to the end of the academic year and as you'd find in the UK we're into summer fairs and plays, but no sports day. I think the lack of sports day is down to the fact that there is limited (or no) sports in schools. As primary school only lasts a few hours in the mornings (you can have your little darlings home any time from 10.30 onwards depending on the school and day of the week) there is little curriculum time for extras such as sport. This, along with music, tends to be done outside of school hours in specialist clubs and institutions. My town for example has a music school for children which runs several afternoons a week and there are numerous sports clubs which also offer training for children on weekday afternoons.
Anyway, I digress, today was Kindergarten's turn. Here, Kindergarten (Kiga) has children between 2 and 6 years of age and in our case has them in mixed age group classes. The Kiga hours are much longer than primary school, we have a 35hour contract which runs from 7.30 am until 2.30pm five days a week. Well, they have spent the last few weeks practising for the grand 'Sommerfest' which entails a 'theaterstuck' or play, a selection of games/activities for the children to complete - and of course lots to eat and drink. A fully stocked cake sale with as many varieties of cupcake as you could think of - my offering were chocolate cakes with peppermint icing on top, topped off with a small chocolate football in a nod towards the European championships - this of course went down particularly well with the football mad Germans!! Furthermore, like any self respecting German fest there is of course a grillstand for Bratwurst etc and also the chance to partake of some beer - now beer on offer at a UK nursery party would just not happen!! But when in Rome and all that, we threw ourselves in with gusto!!
So No2 son (5) had his starring role as a fish today and was beautifully clad in blue with coloured scales, he spoke his lines well with the other fish and sang along all very tunelessly.....if you can imagine 20 3-5 year olds singing you'll get the general picture! Still he had fun and was proud to participate, I had to forcefully restrain his little sister from joining him on stage - it'll be her turn next year as she starts Kiga after the summer break (so actually at the beginning of August as even the Kiga holidays are shorter than school....)
It was a chance to meet other parents socially and we found another native English-speaking parent will be joining the Kiga in August, which given that we live in a small village is quite surprising - even more so when I tell you that there are at least 5 native English speakers in our village (8 if you include the kindling) and it's not all that big really. It was also fun for No1 son to meet his old teachers and some of his old friends from Kiga as a few of them still have siblings there - so all in all a rather lovely day out - save of course for the one thing we couldn't plan for, the weather! Whilst it wasn't torrential we did have a couple of showers and it's been a generally grey and dismal day. Well that's summer for you!!
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