Introduction/specifics

You can find our kindergarten in the village of Schröck near Marburg. It is right in the middle of fields and meadows and there even is forest nearby. We also have a garden outside the house where we do gardening with the children and their parents, growing vegetables and fruits. Once in four weeks we do a nature-week, then we go off the kindergarten's premises to explore.

For us, being in and surrounded by nature is very important for the children's development, they need to get the opportunities to experience nature and get practical or holistic experiences.

The team consists of eight professionals and one apprentice (Erzieher*in im Anerkennungsjahr). We care for up to 60 children from 7:00-17:00 in three mixed-age groups. We work according to the situational approach in open work with and in functional rooms.

Rooms

We work with an open-room concept. The functional rooms set up for this purpose offer the children various forms of activity, movement or play.

The children eat their breakfast and lunch in the Restaurant. In addition, there are regular activities offered by the educators or the kitchen help, where children can cut, cook or taste. In the restaurant there is also a book corner (Lese-Ecke), which is also a waiting area for children waiting for a free seat the one they desire.

There is a room (called Werkstatt) for creative design, a construction room (Bauraum), a room to play and run around (Bewegungsraum), a room for role-playing (Rollenspielraum). The bathroom and the hallway can also be used as a place for learning and experimentation.

The outdoor area is divided into three parts: Yard, rondel with monkey bars and garden, with many opportunities to move and occupy themselves. Behind the garden for playing there is also a kitchen garden, which is cultivated cooperatively by children, parents and educators.

Outdoor Facilities

For optimal development, it is very important for children to always have the opportunity to move, explore, feel and learn in and about nature.

Our outdoor area is very large and offers various play and movement opportunities:  The children can climb, swing, dig in the sand and soil box, drive with different vehicles play with water (in all seasons), slide, build, run, jump, balance and much more.

It is important to us that children can go outside at any time of the day and in any weather, for this reason our outdoor area is always open from 9.30 am annd supervised by educators.

Our kitchen garden also appeals to the children. There is always something to do here, such as digging, sowing, weeding, watering flowers, observing insects and much more.

Daily Schedule

From seven o'clock, one of the rooms and the restaurant are open. With each additional educator, another room opens.

At nine o'clock, there is a morning gathering for the different groups with their educators. They sing, play games or celebrate birthdays together. Important topics concerning the children or the season are also taken up and deepened.

Afterwards, the children are free to play until they are picked up. In addition, there are also specific activities that the children can use voluntarily:

- At 1:00 p.m. there is the opportunity to rest. Here the children can listen to stories, read or told by the specialists, or radio plays in a quiet, relaxed atmosphere.

- Once a week there is choir, where the children who want to paricipate can sing and make music. In addition, there is a cooperation with the music school Kunterbunt, which offers regular activities.

- The garden is cultivated by parents and/or educaters and the children, so work is done here regularly.

Breakfast is served from 7:00-11:00 a.m., and lunch is served from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. At 2:30 p.m., full-day children can eat a snack.

Food

The children bring their own sugar-free breakfast. For birthdays or other seasonal celebrations, there may also be a sweet breakfast.
Lunch is freshly prepared by the cook. We prefer regional and seasonal as well as biological foods. We make sure that it is balanced and varied and that the children are also offered varieties of vegetables, fruits and dishes that are unfamiliar to them. We also use herbs, vegetables and fresh fruits from our own kitchen garden.
If we are informed about allergies and food intolerances, this is taken into account in the preparation. We also take into consideration children who abstain from certain foods (e.g. meat in general, pork, etc.) due to religious or other convictions.
We try to instill a certain openness in the children by encouraging them to try, but also by being a role model ourselves and giving certain foods a chance.
There is always an educator in this room. In the restaurant there is a small cooking corner, where the children can prepare their own small meals, bake or cut something. There is a small terrace outside, where they can eat, too.

Basics

Due to our local proximity to nature and the opportunities it offers for children's development, nature represents an essential part of our pedagogical focus.

Nature weeks take place at regular intervals in our daycare center; these are individually designed according to the current topics and needs of the children. During this time, the children have the opportunity to experience nature even more intensively. They discover the forest, fields and meadows in a playful way, experience wind and weather and explore plants and animals.

In addition, there is a kitchen garden on our large outdoor area. This is cultivated with the children and the parents. This is very important to us, because working in our garden allows the children to gain many different experiences. It takes patience and perseverance and then it is exciting to experience that something grows from small seeds. They also learn that you have to take care of the garden regularly.

We are also concerned about sustainability and environmental awareness:

• We try to get the kids thinking about it.
• We buy organic food from the Ökokiste, meat from the local butcher, bread from the local baker.
• In our kitchen, regional and seasonal products are preferred.
• We buy drinks, milk and dairy products in glass bottles whenever possible.
• We try to produce as little waste as possible and separate the waste that we generate.

In everything we do, it is very important for us to involve children, asking them for their opinions and including them in decision-making processes. We take up the topics that occupy children. They give rise to activities and project ideas.

Employee

Our team consists of trained educators, a kitchen assistant and a cook as well as an educator in the apprenticeship year.

There is a language specialist who is in charge of the support of the children's linguistic development and language assessments.

Most of the staff members have attended training courses concerning our focus, so that we can jointly support many aspects of the development of children in nature.

Additional Offerings

We have a cooperation with the music school Kunterbunt in Schröck. Every week there is an offer for early musical education in the premises of the daycare center, in which all children who wish can participate. This offer is free of charge for the parents.

Quality Assurance

We want to provide good and pedagogically qualitative work on and with your child. For this purpose, we have various forms of quality assurance.

• Regular further training in the whole team or individually offers the possibility of a current and deeper occupation with educational topics and contents, which are to be applied in practice.
• The existing concept is constantly revised and updated. Depending on the topic, we also invite parents to participate.
• If there is ever a problem, we use the so-called complaint management. The aim of this is to identify the problem and develop solutions.

Cooperations

Our cooperation partners are:

• The Kunterbunt Music School, which offers an early education program at our center.
• The Tausendfüßler elementary school offers regular round tables, in which representatives of the daycare centers Bauerbach and Ginseldorf also participate.

Teamwork with school

All development before school entry is school-preparatory, all first six years of life. We support the children for part of this journey, throughout the entire kindergarten period.

In the last year before starting school, there are so-called preschool weeks (Vorschulwochen) in which the children deal with self-selected topics in a project-like manner. Our main goal is to help children learn to take responsibility and to perform tasks.

Towards the end of the kindergarten year, the Tausendfüßler elementary school invites the preschool children to visit its facilities. In addition, there are several meetings with the children from the daycare centers in Bauerbach and Ginseldorf, since all the preschool children from these facilities together will become the new first graders at the elementary school.

Teamwork with parents

Parent work is very important to us. We work closely with the parents' council. It forms a mouthpiece between the team and the parents.

• We invite parents to a meeting of the parents' council once a month. There, concerns are raised on both sides, solutions are developed and events are planned in partnership.
• Parties and celebrations are not only planned together, but the work is also shared and many parents help, for example, with the sale/distribution of food and drinks, with the set-up and dismantling, etc. The work in the garden is also done by volunteers.
• The work in the garden is also supported by parent volunteers.

Specifics

One component of our work is the promotion of language skills. This is supported by all educators, especially by the language specialist. We participate in the Marburg Language Support Program. This provides the language specialist with opportunities for exchange, transfer and further training for the practice of language support work in the day-to-day life of the daycare center.

She also conducts the Kinder Sprach Screening, or KISS for short. This is a language level test for four-year-olds.

Since May 2021, we have been participating in the European project ElaDiNa (Early Language Development in Nature). It is a project that fits in with existing daycare interaction practice and aims to increase the quality of interaction with regard to language education. It follows the idea of language education and support integrated into everyday life.

Overview

The catchment area of our facility is the village of Schröck, but we also care for children from the surrounding villages of Moischt and Bauerbach, as well as the districts of Richtsberg and Cappel. The prerequisite is that they are registered in Marburg. We accept children in the month of their third birthday.

One week before admission, we hold an admission interview with the parents, where they have the opportunity to ask questions and to get sneakpeak of the facility. 

At the time of admission, the child must be free of contagious diseases, the pediatricians certify this in advance.

According to German vaccination regulations, they must be vaccinated against measles and parents must be able to show this.

During the admission interview there are some forms to fill out and important information. However, you can also access these in the Kita Info App we use as soon as your child is registered with us.

Description and Stations

Coming from Marburg, you will find our daycare center if you turn left into the first street (Am schwarzen Born) and follow it to the end. There you will find our building (No. 5) on the left side.

To get to the main entrance, you have to walk halfway around the building after entering the premises.

The stop Am Schwarzen Born is served by the lines 12 and 80. Line 12 comes from Südbahnhof in Marburg and returns there after a tour via Schröck, Moischt and Cappel. Line 80 comes from Homberg Ohm and travels via Schröck to Erlenring in Marburg.