Basics
St. Konrad Kindergarten is a family-supporting facility -
The goal of our educational work
Pedagogical Principles
The Catholic Kindergarten Sankt Konrad is a family-supporting facility that provides support and guidance.
Care, support, guidance, and safety are the most important pillars of our facility. We provide these through needs-based (annual survey) and flexible childcare hours. We tailor our services to the families' current work and living situations. We see ourselves as a center that provides space for personal exchange, mutual support, and guidance.
Every child is an individual, competent, and infinitely capable of learning.
Every child, as well as the educational process, is designed to foster attachment and secure relationships. Every child actively participates in their development and education from birth. Every child is constantly learning. Each child decides what they want to learn at the moment and what they are ready for. The educational focus in our facility is therefore on self-determination and self-activity, self-initiative, and autonomy.
To develop a positive self-concept, we focus on the child's strengths and encourage them to take action.
Everyone has unique talents and abilities that are readily demonstrated and utilized. We utilize these gifts to positively guide and support children's development. This makes it easier for them to learn about, try out, and embrace new and unknown things.
Your child is at the center of our work. Our task is to meet your child where they are in their developmental process.
In our facility, we provide children with a new environment in which they can gain new life experiences. In their daily interactions, they have the opportunity to gain new and personal life experiences through interaction with one another. This takes place in a child-friendly environment that considers and respects the children's basic needs (play, movement, exploration, interaction, communication). Through continuous, supervised care, which always focuses on the child's current development, we enable constructive and self-directed development by the child.
Educational partnership – We view our parents as partners with whom we work together for the benefit of the child.
The kindergarten is a counseling and support facility that addresses the current life situation of families and children. We work in close collaboration with family support institutions and services, thus providing support that we, as a kindergarten team, cannot provide. Our goal is to work together with parents and children to improve the situation and quality of life of families.
Help me to do it myself
This well-known quote from Maria Montessori accompanies our daily work with the children at our center. Through a well-prepared learning environment, each child, as the builder of their own self, is given the opportunity to independently and individually open their own learning windows. Through recurring rituals and rules, we enable each child to develop and expand their own inner security and orientation. We achieve this through the continuous, active inclusion, participation, and creative design of the children. We offer appropriate learning materials for every age group that encourage play (= learning) and offer diverse developmental opportunities.
Encouraging through Challenge
Every child is passionate about learning. We harness their joy of learning and continually offer the opportunity to positively acquire knowledge through practice and reinforcement in the St. Konrad Kindergarten learning environment. Knowledge can thus be consolidated and expanded. We harness the children's curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Interest and learning groups are formed with other interested children, who formulate common goals and then embark on a journey of discovery in their immediate learning environment. The best learning method, "playful learning," is used here. By involving the children, exploring different questions and approaches, formulating child-friendly explanations, documenting, and presenting learning outcomes, challenges are mastered individually or collectively to achieve the goal.
Human dignity is God-given
Family is of fundamental importance to the church and society. We offer support to parents and children. Our goal is to provide support for an independent, socially engaged life oriented toward Christian values through lived faith in the community. Through child-friendly activities, we encourage families to experience the church. We see ourselves as a place of encounter that addresses the needs of families and provides space for questions, suggestions, and ideas.
Religious Education – Peace Education
In our kindergarten, we practice religious education from the child's perspective. We view each child as a unique being and provide them with the necessary space to discover themselves, open up, and build trust in order to find their place in the group. Our mission is to understand the child. The child's dignity and personality are paramount here.
Through living together with others and through shared experiences in a group, the child develops an important relationship with their environment, fellow human beings, and religious beliefs.
In kindergarten, we educate children to be considerate, tolerant, open, supportive, and trusting. In doing so, we lay the first foundations for the ability to form relationships and for a fundamental religious attitude.
An important task of religious education in kindergarten is to answer children's questions. This gives the child an initial orientation for life. – Religious education means appreciation and tolerance for other opinions and beliefs. Religious education cannot be separated from other activities.
Regardless of the specific goals pursued, it is important to remember in the educational work of our kindergarten that our society is Christian, as enshrined in the Bavarian Constitution.
Role models – We don't have to teach children anything; they copy everything we do anyway.
How we interact with children in kindergarten has a fundamental influence on their understanding of reality. Therefore, we work closely with the parish and the local government.
In our interactions with the children entrusted to our care, we continually reflect on our work.
Play is the fundamental foundation of all learning, our means of support!
In our kindergarten work, play is of great importance because it is a basic need of the child. Play means "learning for life" - "actively engaging with my environment."
Developing cooperative thinking and acting, building frustration tolerance, and developing appreciation for people and materials are also part of play. Children need time to play, because that is the only way they can learn. That's why we grant each child an individual time frame.
Children form relationships through play. In play, children engage with different experiences. They learn to contribute and realize their own ideas. However, the implementation of their own needs, especially when playing with other children, also reveals boundaries in interaction. Play experiences are holistic experiences for children. In addition to assessing their own abilities, play promotes emotional and social awareness as well as linguistic expression. Play is the foundation of all learning for children. Learning here does not take place through the transmission of content, but rather in a lifelike, situational way, through experiencing connections, through one's own actions and understanding.
Working across age groups
It is necessary to facilitate specific solutions that are oriented toward the well-being of the child and the family. As the Catholic St. Konrad Kindergarten, we respond to the current circumstances and needs of families and therefore offer care and support in mixed-age groups as well as homogeneous groups to educate, encourage, support, and accompany children individually. We see ourselves as pioneers of a more humane society. For this reason, children of all ages need a place where they are accepted and can live according to their developmental stage. Our mission is to teach children skills that prepare them for life in our society and support them in doing so.
Skills Development
A mixed-age group provides children with a wide range of experiences and interactions with other children at an early age. A social structure, similar to that of extended families, is experienced and shaped. Interactions with younger, same-age, and older children, in particular, facilitate social experiences that influence their overall development.
Language interaction, learning from role models, imitation and teaching, caring and sharing are particularly beneficial for older children. Self-esteem, self-confidence, and independence are particularly fostered here.
Younger children particularly benefit from interacting with older children through attention, help and support, guidance toward independence, language interaction, and continuous contact. Due to the different age groups, competition takes a back seat, as development and change always proceed differently, thus resulting in less struggle for group roles. Nevertheless, the children still have peers in the group with whom they can compete or play. Due to the annual changes in the kindergarten year (school children leaving school), the children repeatedly experience different roles.
Mastering Transitions - Special Groups
We ensure that children are gradually integrated into the group and that each child, despite care and supervision, has the opportunity to make independent contacts and explore their environment.
It is important to us to help children learn to master their everyday tasks so that they can participate confidently and independently in group activities.
We tailor our offerings to the children's different abilities so that each child can contribute according to their development.
Through our situation-oriented approach and the implementation of the Education and Training Plan (ETP), we are able to take different age groups into account in the individual activities (learning support programs, homework support, leisure activities, project offerings, etc.)
Networked Support - Developmental Support through Dialogue
Through regular and continuous observations, we gain insight into the children's current developmental stage and the group structure. Any necessary support can be provided directly by us, coordinated with the parents after consultation with the parenting partners, or made available through additional support, either internally or with the help of external partners. We use the legally prescribed observation tools.
Positive Learning Environment – The Room as a Third Educator
We see ourselves as a preschool facility and therefore ensure that the cognitive development of older children is not restricted. Activities and projects ensure appropriate, age-appropriate, and holistic support.
We select our activities so that children can participate according to their developmental level. In addition to the full-group activities, we also offer small group activities tailored to their age and developmental level, as well as project work and work groups.
A contemporary, engaging learning environment
Our spaces are designed to be engaging, challenging, and diverse for all children. We provide opportunities for play, retreat, rest, and exercise, as well as play materials appropriate to the children's ages. We believe the learning environment is adaptable and adapts to the current needs of the group and the children.
Learning to Learn
Educational processes are always interactive processes with people, animals, or things (including media), which are most effective when completely self-directed. (Spitzer)
In our daily kindergarten routine, children experience a wide variety of learning environments. Depending on the situation, we provide individual learning support in individual situations, in small groups, in project groups, and with the whole group. Here, we focus on the child's ideas, topics, and approaches that correspond to their respective developmental stage. We view the child as an agent in their own education. The focus is not on the work result, but on the path to the result
Education always and everywhere
There are no standardized learning paths or learning methods. Everyone learns differently and at a different time. The starting point for educational processes is primarily the resources that the child brings with them through personal experiences and predispositions. Educational processes take place constantly – not just in daycare, daycare, after-school care, and school, but in every everyday situation!
Opening up to the outside world – Networked offerings – Mastering transitions
The task of educators, or adults in general, is to provide interesting opportunities and inspiration, to create practical challenges and opportunities for play. It's about being allowed to experiment, receiving social support, and developing opportunities, skills, and resources. It's about supporting curiosity and allowing creativity.
Skills and knowledge are built through independent experimentation, developing questions, independent reflection, and discovering possible solutions. Therefore, we work with external educational partners such as the police, biosphere reserves, schools, businesses, and government agencies. Knowledge is expanded in a variety of ways through new learning spaces and educational partners for children.
