EDUCATION AREAS
About language and bilingualism
Language acquisition and language development/promotion are primarily included in nowadays education and are of great importance as they can be used as an element for integration into society, which is the reason why, we as an educational institution, consider language acquisition an essential subject of our concept.As teachers and specialists, we act as daily and constant role models for the children, and we understand that language and continuous self-reflection are an essential part of our educational tasks, with the main goal being the creation of a supportive environment to match the children’s needs together with their individual development process.Our educational institution offers a bilingual immersion concept where the children have contact with the English language as a second language which enables the children from an early age to learn English in a casual way and on a daily basis.The English language is consistently spoken as an everyday language by specific and permanent teachers, while other teachers exclusively use the German language to communicate with the children. As a result, our STUGGIKIDS playfully learn the first terms and words, both in German and English, through songs, games, books, and other planned language-promoting activities.The immersion method matches each level of the children’s individual development, from a younger to an older age child, as their main activities through their first years of life is to make new sounds learn new words, sentences, and idioms.Through positive reinforcement and repetition, we strengthen the joy of speaking a language together with the children’s self-confidence.
Let’s be friends
An important goal at STUGGIKIDS is to teach various social skills. These include, for example, establishing contact and forming relationships with other children, which are strengthened through different playing situations. It is equally important to empathize with others and to show consideration for other children in order to create a better atmosphere of community. In this way, the children learn respect for others and for themselves.Competencies are strengthened such as:• acting self-confidently and solving conflicts peacefully
• coming to terms with rules and sticking to them
• building relationships with other children and recognizing their feelings.
I can do this by myself
From birth, children face challenges that they have to cope with more and more independently. In line with Maria Montessori’s motto, „Help me to do it myself“, they are dependent on outside support to be strengthened in their self-efficacy and independence. Children often master a lot more than one would give them credit for.According to individual needs and abilities, the STUGGIKIDS open spaces of experience in which the children can test themselves and their skills, overcome new hurdles and practice and develop their skills through constant repetition. Personalized Stickers help even the youngest to find not only their peg space but also their cup, their change of clothes, their portfolio folder, their toothbrush and their works of art. Child-friendly furniture at eye level enables independent play and lets the children choose their desired play materials themself, setting the table or climbing up the children’s staircase to the changing table independently. There is a drinks trolley that lets the children access their cups at all times during the day, as well as sinks and toilets at different heights.The independence of the STUGGIKIDS is also promoted by our loving staff in everyday situations. We give them the space and the necessary trust in their abilities to try themselves out and develop. These varied experiences enable the children to develop into self-confident personalities that can act independently in a wide variety of life situations.
Our feelings
From birth, babies communicate with their emotions. This plays a very important role in people’s lives, as feelings affect the body, psyche, behaviour, social interactions and cognitive development. Children also already experience a wide range of emotions in their daycare centres throughout the day. For example, very young children are sometimes blindsided by certain feelings for the first time, such as during a conflict with their peers.We, as professionals, accompany the children every day in a sensitive and loving way in their individual experiences, perceptions, and dealing with their feelings. Emotions are not only addressed and discussed in the group room but are also encountered daily by individual children and the entire group as an essential fundamental theme in the entire daily routine. Here we support and encourage the children to perceive, understand, show, and verbalize all their feelings and help them classify better and regulate themselves. Through various emotional experiences, children become more confident, capable, and self-assured in their interactions with others, especially in dealing with challenging and stressful situations.
Jumping like a kangaroo and crawling like a polar bear
Movement is a key part when fostering holistic growth during childhood. Children have a natural urge to move and enjoy every kind of movement, which they are encouraged to live out in everyday life at STUGGIKIDS. Movement in any shape or form promotes healthy body awareness and, at the same time, fosters the development of all skills and abilities.Therefore, the STUGGIKIDS offers stimulating and challenging spaces where the children can express their natural desire to move. Different movement elements, age-specific obstacles, certified sports lessons according to the Stuttgart Movement Passport (license), and movement-rich group activities not only take place in the group rooms but also in our very own movement room.
The children from the crèche and the kindergarten have their spacious garden with age-specific play equipment, such as a sandbox, a slide and much more, inviting them to move around and explore. In addition, we have the opportunity to use the playground in the „Bürgerpark“, which is only a stone’s throw away.Spending time outdoors is firmly anchored in our daily routine and invites us to go out into nature all year round. No matter if that means building a snowman, dancing in the rain, or enjoying the sun. All STUGGIKIDS are encouraged to jump, climb, dance, and run with joy, whether indoors or outdoors.
Creativity
Creativity in children’s everyday lives involves more than just handicrafts and, with the sensory experiences it entails, is already elementary for the youngest children. Experimenting with colours and shapes, slipping into other roles, and actively grasping their environment with all their senses enables children to develop their thinking in images, imaginations, and fantasies. Children experience their self-efficacy and show us their inner world as well as their perception of the world through their artwork and imaginative role play. For us, the focus is not on presentable perfection but the free development of individual expressiveness and personality. We offer a prepared space, enough time for new impulses and access to a variety of materials and techniques.
When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut
Children have an innate sense of curiosity and are eager to explore their environment. As a result, they find access to scientific, mathematical and technical topics through incidental discoveries in their day-to-day life. When experimenting in nature or the creative space, they deal specifically with a question or a phenomenon, in which they are supported with our help in their targeted search and thus find answers playfully. Furthermore, with various materials, the help of scientific discussions, books and hands-on research and experimentation, we promote holistic learning and the experience of our environment and its phenomena. At the same time, problem-solving skills and all personal skills, e.g., self-efficacy, self-confidence, cognitive and linguistic skills of our STUGGIKIDS, are stimulated and promoted
More, less or the same
Children learn mathematical basics at an early age. These go hand in hand with their motor development. For example, walking backwards and other spatial experiences such as left-right, up-down and diagonal movements are the first traits of mathematical understanding. Later, children often look for activities such as sorting and arranging according to, for example, colours, shapes, size or comparing quantities, which is why appropriately stimulating material is available at the nursery.Mathematical knowledge is further deepened in a playful way, for example, through activities such as collecting different objects with the same properties on an excursion in the forest or the mutual measuring and weighing of the children at the nursery.We aim to cover all areas of mathematical knowledge such as numbers and counting, patterns and symmetries, shapes and bodies, measure and compare etc.By incorporating mathematical quantities, digits, and numbers into our everyday language use, the STUGGIKIDS learn how to use and understand them simultaneously.
Hit it!
Children develop basic rhythmic and musical skills by singing and making music with and without instruments. In addition, logical thinking gets stimulated, and communication skills and language get promoted through creating music.Through various pieces of music and songs, the STUGGIKIDS learn to recognize everyday structures such as the morning circle, which always begins with a good morning song, the clean-up phases through a clean-up song or the beginning of lunch through a table song.Even young children can combine linguistic and cultural boundaries to express their feelings and thoughts through music. Motor skills also get promoted through movement sessions and dance to music, which is why music is used daily at STUGGIKIDS as an educational tool for holistic development.
Get out in the green
It is in the child’s nature to explore the world with curiosity. It doesn’t take much for a child to explore nature. However, a trip to the forest or park needs a safe space in the open air to pursue this need. That’s why we at STUGGIKIDS have two large and well-equipped gardens. These surroundings invite the children to play, explore, measure their strength, and gather sensory experiences in a natural environment.With field trips, adapted to the interests of the children, we go, for example, to the playground, to the „Kräherwald“, or go on small hikes through the vineyards.For example, with the collected treasures from nature, we STUGGIKIDS, make creative pictures from autumn leaves or craft with chestnuts. In this way, we offer continuing holistic education with fun and enjoyment.Projects such as „From Caterpillar to Butterfly“ are also a very special experience for the STUGGIKIDS, where they can experience the wonders of our nature up close and responsibly with shining eyes.
Beautiful Stuttgart!
For us STUGGIKIDS, our ambition is to bring the children closer to the city they live in, the beautiful surroundings and all that our nature has to offer. For this purpose, one fixed day a week is scheduled as our field trip day. On this day, we usually leave the daycare after breakfast, stay out for at least an hour, and get to explore all kinds of exciting places.The crèche also likes to go on field trips once a week, with alternating days. In addition, our electric Kitabus enables even the youngest children to explore fascinating Stuttgart.Whether it is „climbing“ the TV tower, a guided tour of the „Junges Schloss“ or simply a visit to the market, our children are always extremely excited and look forward to our trips all week. This brings our children a lot of variety to the day-to-day daycare routine, and they get to experience many new things every week. It is especially important to teach them how to behave appropriately in public spaces, public transport, and traffic. Also, simply running and romping in the castle garden is fun and trains the perception in an open area.We often bring something back from our field trips, for example, fruit from the market, which we then use to bake a delicious and healthy cake in our educational kitchen. In this way, we enrich the daycare centre’s everyday life and our pedagogical (educational) work in many ways with a field trip day.
Healthy, yummy and good for the tummy
Children need a balanced diet for their growth, development, and health. Therefore, we offer a varied and vitamin-rich organic mixed diet that covers the children’s needs of all the important nutrients. We get part of our lunch from Menü-Manufaktur Hofmann, which is characterized by fresh and organic ingredients and without any flavour enhancers. It is also certified by the German Nutrition Society (DGE). With small cards on which the dishes are visualized, we can involve the children to a reasonable extent in the planning of the menu. Other advantages are the different dishes for crèche and kindergarten children, which meet their respective needs. Lunch is cooked and served fresh at our facility. Of course, we freshly prepare the other meals such as breakfast, partial lunches and snacks ourselves in our professional kitchen.
A sufficient range of drinks is available to the children at any time in child-friendly drink trolleys with personal cups.
Children who are not allowed to eat everything for religious or health reasons are, of course, to receive separate food.
In addition to a balanced and varied diet, it is of central importance for us to organize the eating situation in such a way that the STUGGIKIDS can enjoy their meals in a calm and pleasant atmosphere. Therefore, meals are taken in a separate dining room. This is equipped with tripp-trapp chairs and tables at an adult height so that both the children and us educators can eat together at eye level. Thus, the children experience and learn alongside our table manners and cuisine culture.
In our friendly dining room, there is also an educational kitchen to be found, in which we regularly involve the children in the preparation of the dishes. In addition, we often buy the groceries together with the children. Here too, we make sure that the little ones entrusted to us are encouraged in their independence, language, and communication by giving them time to exchange ideas and, for example, serve themselves the food.
This is the way we brush our teeth, brush our teeth…
One of the first steps to nurture your child’s health and self-care is while changing their nappies. Therefore, we take our time to change each nappy and make the experience into an educational activity. The stairs at the changing table enable the children to climb onto the changing mat themselves under supervision. This promotes independence and takes the strain off our backs.We’re supporting the children when they are ready to take off their nappies and start potty training. Our „mini-toilet“ helps the children with their potty training as its size is specially adapted to small children.Washing hands also need to be practised, which is why we have sinks at different heights, as well as contactless soap and paper towel dispensers that the children can operate independently.It goes without saying that the STUGGIKIDS brush their teeth after lunch. In the crèche, we gently introduce the children to the use of toothbrushes; however, this is done without toothpaste. Our older ones are very independent when brushing their teeth: They get their toothbrush and cup by themselves from their own personal hygienic toothbrush cupboard. However, our staff helps with dispensing the toothpaste not to waste too much.And then we can start: „This is the way we brush our teeth, …“
Party at STUGGIKIDS
At Stuggikids, we celebrate the children’s birthdays and traditional holidays such as Christmas, Easter, or Halloween. Once a year there is also a big summer party with all the families where we play, feast and chat a lot. At our annual Christmas party, the parents are also allowed to join us and act as the audience for a small performance by the children before a culinary and informal exchange takes place afterwards. In addition, Santa Claus visits us every year, for which we practice songs and poems beforehand, which the Stuggikids proudly recite to Santa Claus.
Soon I’ll be in school!
Here at STUGGIKIDS, our little ones are being encouraged as well as challenged in all the many different fields of childhood development. Especially during the final year at the Kindergarten, we provide a weekly preschool program, which had been developed particularly for this purpose. This preschool program serves to prepare the preschool kids for their school career according to the following fields of childhood development:– understanding of numbers and multitudes, logical reasoning and spatial awareness (early understanding of mathematics)– letters, first written words, finger positioning and swinging exercises for writing with a pencil (literacy, language promotion/training, motor training, reading introduction)– concentration, persistency, self-confidence and self-esteem, frustration tolerance, social skills, following rules and procedures (cognitive development, social behaviour).Our preschool program is based on the „SCHLAUDINO – Freude am Lernen“ curriculum (for further information, see www.schlaudino.com).The different learning units are structured the same way so that our preschool kids have the opportunity to get used to the procedures and characteristics of a school lesson. Furthermore, the learning units are carried out both in German and English.Our preschool kids“ motivation as well as their natural curiosity are being encouraged by playful and experimental activities, exercises and task sheets. Furthermore, we use different materials as well as our interactive computer projector, with which the kids can practise writing and reading both numbers and letters, providing a varying learning opportunity for our preschool kids. In order to ensure individual learning support, our skilled team members match the tasks and exercises to the individual development state of each preschool kid. For example, we use Legos, cars, animals or other material, matching the children’s individual interests to promote both writing and counting; we try our best to make learning literally „graspable“.