Schools or Kindergartens for a 4 year old - Munich

hi armgacon, your child must go to an exceptional kindergarten. if my duagther hears anything of abcs or numbers it is from the older children not the teachers.

Chocolate Butterflies is a German/English Kindergarten. How about the best of both Worlds? Let your child attend K-garten for the social stimulation in the mornings and home school in the aftenoons.

PM me if you'd like contact info.

Hi,

I am very satisfied with my kiga and the kindergarten my son attended/attents. They learn lots of songs, colors, they paint and they have fund and I think that fun is what kids in this age need. I don´t think that it will make you much smarter if you learn the whole alphabet and numbers at the age of 4.
I knew the whole alphabet and spoke a little bit italian and I could substract all the numbers by the time I started school.
At school, I was very very bored and I was a smartass and I don´t think that many kids liked me. I knew all the answers and it didn´t help me much in life - i am still not a milioner. So my thing is, let the kids have fun and be the same like the other kids. If you see that your kid have any special interests than we should give them our support in that but we should not force them to be something they are not...And I think that all kids are special in their own way

although i agree somewhat with the sentiments, i think it all depends on what sort of kiga your kids go too. some people i know have crap kigas where the kids dont learn shit including discipline, in others they are pushed forward. i also think 7 is too old, but you can pretty much make them take your child with 6. we did and it was the right thing to do, i would be very careful about teaching your kids everything before they go to school. one, you will teach them everything in english and they will have problems adapting the to german. two, they may get bored and cause a distraction in school, this will not be looked at very nicely and could be a disadvantage. what does pee me off is the amount of homework the little ones get, it seems strange, but it does involve the parents and thats cool. there are also alot of teachers in the state system who are 'montisorri' trained, so look around, but if your child is already in kiga, think about the consequences of breaking up their blossoming friendships. the german system on the whoe demands more from the parents, so a certain amount of sacrifice is important here, sports are done "so that the children who sit a home infront of the telly dont get to fat", to quote my sons teacher, but proper competertive sports are done at the local sports verein, which means you ferrying the kids around alot. it is also a good idea to get them into some sort of art training - schule der phantasie - as this gets the fine motor coordination working sooner. also see if your kiga or school does courses, we're in barvaria and its good for the kids that they can ski at five years old, and i think its great that my local school does a chess course; something to do on a rainy day, and great training for the mind.

I have my opinion on this but I shall comment at a later date.

Wrong. School starts at age 6.
It might seem like silly games and fun to you but it usually isn't.

I know exactly what you mean by that. Biting my tongue too.

Giving your brats a ride to the sportsverein is kind of counterproductive.
I wonder what is up with today's parents. When I was 6 I went to school on my own, by feet. No mommy giving me a ride every morning. And in the afternoon I met friends running through the woods, getting dirty, ruining clothes and brand new shoes, climbing trees, hurting ourselves, buying a pack of cigs and smoking them which caused us to cough our lungs out and made us sick, convincing us never to try them again. Two or three times someone broke a bone. Shit happens, all of us survived, and everyone learned a lot. Sometimes I was late back home and then, after a good oldfashioned talkin' to and promise to be on time from now on everything was fine again. Of course I went missing again a few days later, and the process would repeat itself, without me being grounded or similar bullshit.

Children were allowed to be children, got in trouble occasionally, and had to face the consequences of their deeds without overprotective parents shielding them from everything. When did we start to treat them like little adults, expecting academic achievements before they even enter school?

Well, as far as teaching your kids to read at 6 or 7 is absolutely absurd. I'm not saying teach them at 3 or whatever, but the earlier you start the more apt children are to retain what they have learned.

When we started getting all of these quacks out there that tell us that children have Attention deficit Hyeractivity Disorder (ADHD). Ok, I must admit I know some serious cases of children with this, but there are alternative medicines out there. However, I do not think they work nearly as good as the ones made by drug companies.

Not entirely relevant but still a good read...

Our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint, which was promptly chewed and licked. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors or cabinets and it was fine to play with pans.

When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip flops and fluorescent 'spokey dokey's' on our wheels. As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or airbags - riding in the passenger seat was a treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle and it tasted the same.

We ate chips, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.

We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can and no one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went top speed down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded.

We did not have Play stations or X-Boxes, no video games at all. No 99 channels on TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, and no Internet chat rooms. We had friends; we went outside and found them.

We played elastics and street rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt.

We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones but there were no lawsuits.

We had full on fistfights but no prosecution followed from other parents.

We played knock-and-run and were actually afraid of the owners catching us.

We walked to friend's homes.

We also, believe it or not, WALKED to school; we didn't rely on mummy or daddy to drive us to school, which was just round the corner.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls.

We rode bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law unheard of. They actually sided with the law.

Our generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow as real kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good.

mine are not brats.

they're energetic noisy little buggers...

whats worse are parents who intervene in the arggie barrgie of playground fisty cuffs, declaring such bullshit as you shouldn't hit people blah blah blah. let kids sort their own shit out. if your son whacks somebody and then gets whacked back , thats his problem. (those who were with me on sunday know exactly how i feel about that)

and

its called being a child. they can't sit still for twenty seconds, and our sad lets-get-a-child-to-match-the-ikea-sofa society can't cope with this fact. what i find interesting is the more our society tries to keep the kids safe, ie indoors so they wont get dirty/ripped clothes/picck up swear words from fellow touch rugby players/kidnapped (delete as appropriate) the more this seems to be a problem. one of the biggest problems in schools/kigas at the moment is the gender bias. way to many female teachers/carers and unfortunatly way to many who believe that boys should act like girls. girls can sit much quieter than boys, they also have the sharpest bitchiest tounges, so boys who act more "boistress" are quickly classified as hyperactive, ie the blame is pushed onto them. my schoolmaster was ex RAF second world war mad fascinating sports man. if we got too much for him we'd have to go out and catch cricket balls for one hour. he also canned me for playing football inside.

great posts keydeck and gideon. we all grew up alright!

just for info...i think the whole play until your 7 is called the Steiner method. At least then you know what to avoid

So if the kindergarten system here is so wonderful, why is it that in a few years time, it will only be from ages 3 - 5?

So if the kindergarten system here is so wonderful, why is it that in a few years time, it will only be from ages 3 - 5?

Also we moved here at the end of March and by June my 3 year old was totally fluent in German and speaking better German than her German cousins (4/6). This is according to my mother in law. So if a child can learn a new language that quickly, why can't she start learning reading and writing? And with reference to the kindergartens themselves, what benefits are there to the child when 3,4,5 and 6 year old children are in 1 classroom together? The way I know it, children in kindergarten/preschool are grouped according to age.

Different times my friends, different times.
We had no Johnny Knoxville and Jackass showing us how to really get hurt. All we had was that coyote and the roadrunner, but there was no Acme store to go to to get all that neat stuff.

I agree with most of that when you are 10+, but at 2-5, they need to learn not to whack their fellow playmates. They will anyway, but this is the time to learn civility. Those that don't will become bullies until someone kicks the shit out of them and that is not a parents job. The parents job is to teach them not to be the bully in the first place, but how to kick a bullies ass!

klgirl,
What's this about Kiga from 3-5. What's going to happen to the 6&7 year olds?

hi tara, instead of starting real school at 6/7 they will then start at 5/6. also does anybody here what that OECD report on education say about Germany?