This is the third year that I am teaching at my kids’ Montessori school. I love being in the Pre-K/Kindergarten class. We usually wait a few weeks before I start, so the children can get settled in their regular routines and work. This year, I’m teaching in the late morning, before lunch. It’s nice that the children then have time to sit and do the coloring page or activity that I bring in.

My first lesson goes something like this:

I greet them with Guten Morgen! I repeat it a number of times and then ask them to repeat it after me.

I tell them my name with Ich heiße…. Then I ask them to tell my their names. I look and point at a student (now I can choose the children who have been in the class in the past years to help demonstrate to the new children) and ask, “Wie heißt du?” I often model for them “Ich heiße ….” Some of the children are not yet ready to speak, and that’s just fine!

I introduce the action words to our Hello Song. (I’ll be posting separately about that soon!) The action words are klatschen, stampfen, & patschen. I show them the large image cards I printed out and laminated, and we say & repeat the words.

We practice the action words, too. I ask them to stay seated to practice stampfen. That’s the trickiest one, because the kids tend to want to keep stomping and even start jumping up and down.

I also teach them ja & nein. Then I show them pictures and ask, “Ist das ‘klatschen’?” for example. I always start with showing the right image. Then I switch it up on them and show them the wrong picture.

Finally, it’s time to sing the song! We always do the actions two times, so I often count: eins, zwei!

I also sing “Meine Finger” from Die 30 Besten Spiel- und Bewegungsliedern, Vol. 3. Instead of the actions in the original song, I repeat the actions from our Hello Song – only klatschen & patschen. Obviously you don’t use your fingers to stomp! (download the text below)

We sing our Goodbye song before I send the children off to do their coloring page. It’s to the same tune as Hoch soll er leben and goes Tschüss mit einander, tschüss miteinander, tschüss, tschüss, tschüss!

Finally I give them a coloring page with images of the actions from the Hello Song and they lyrics. I like the parents to get an idea of what we’re doing in the class, even if they can’t read the German!

You can download the lyrics to “Meine Finger” here: Meine Finger – GitA

Viel Spaß!