Preschool Standard Times

9:00 -16:00
Preschool children must be three years of age and toilet-trained.

Before Care and After Care

Busy Bees International Preschool recognizes the needs of working parents and provides a safe, entertaining and social environment for students during those hours before class begins and after class time ends.

Before school care begins at 8:00 and After school care is offered until 18:00 (please note that the latter is only for the preschool children). Activities include outside play, crafts, (a quiet place to finish assigned work or read), and story telling.

Early Drop-Off

8:00-9:00
Early morning drop-off is available for Toddler and Preschool students.

Extended Day Program for the Preschool Group

16:00-18:00
The Extended Day Program provides after-school care for Preschool students only.

Additional Saturday morning and holiday program

Busy Bees International Preschool (with all its programs) is required by law to remain closed during Sundays and all German public holidays.

During the general school holidays special holiday programs will be offered, details to be advised closer to the time.

Saturday mornings a supervised fun and entertainment program will be made available for 3 hours (if reasonable demand arises, please therefore register in advance).

Additional language training

Additional language training (English/German or German/English) may be offered to students and/or their parents individually or in small groups.

3-6 Year-olds' Preschool Program

At Busy Bees International Preschool, your children will

• Make friends
• Explore nature
• Paint, draw, and do expressive artwork
• Discover reading and math at their own individualized pace
• Enjoy weekly music classes and weekly dance instruction
• Learn about different cultures and geography
• Build confidence by mastering everyday living skills
• Develop self-esteem and a love of learning in a warm, interesting, supportive school community

Our Primary Program caters for children between ages 3 through 6. This is a period crucial to personality and intellectual development when the child has an ability to absorb knowledge effortlessly from his surroundings. We guide the students to learn good manners and habits as well as work on developing the individual potential of each child to its maximum

The first task a child learns when he or she comes to the Montessori classroom is that there is a certain order in the classroom. The children learn that materials belong on the shelf at a specific place and after using it they have to replace it back at the same place. The teacher demonstrates this first. When a child selects a task, he/she repeats the activity until he/she masters the task.

A Montessori primary classroom can be likened to a very healthy, productive beehive. It abounds with organized activity. It is a place where children have a job, dictated by their own developmental levels and what Maria Montessori described as their "sensitive periods" for learning particular skills such as pouring a glass of water without spilling a drop, writing their name or learning to read.

The 3-6 Environment

• Areas include Language, Mathematics, Sensorial, and Practical Life
• Individualized activities encourage decision making and problem solving skills
• 3-year age span helps build strong social/communication skills, development of long term relationships with teachers and classmates

Language Goals

• Hands on manipulatives encourage development of early reading/writing skills
• Vocabulary enrichment, listening games, singing, daily exposure to books promote love of reading
• Fine motor skill development through work with tracing geometric shapes, using knobbed puzzles in preparation for writing
• Lessons in proper letter/number formation, word spacing
• Encouragement of creative writing

Math Goals

• Concrete materials help child gain physical understanding of math concepts
• Decimal system (units, tens, hundreds, thousands) introduced starting at age 3
• Exposure to operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division by end of Kindergarten year
• Exposure to fractions, time, money

Sensorial Goals

• Manipulatives to assist the child in developing a system of classifying sensory information
• Refinement of child's perception of size, shape, color, weight, sound along with specific language
• Geometry-work with triangles, quadrilaterals, polygons (with appropriate language)

Practical Life Goals

• Exercises to help children learn to care for themselves and their environment
• Development of pride, responsibility, and problem solving skills
• Activities include spooning, tweezing, sweeping, dressing frames (for buttoning, snapping, zippering, tying, buckling), using scissors, screwdrivers, hammers, pliers
• Lessons in grace and courtesy, safety, and personal health and hygiene

Cultural Goals

• Further child's natural interest in geography through work with globes and puzzle maps
• Developing an awareness and appreciation of the diversity of people and cultures
• Helping children develop an understanding of the role of humanity as stewards of the environment
• Empowering children to come to the assistance of those in need through involvement in community service projects

Children learn about people and cultures in other countries with an attitude of respect and admiration. Through familiarity, children come to feel connected to the global human family. Lessons and experiences with nature inspire a reverence for all life. The comprehensive art and music programs give children every opportunity to enjoy a variety of creative activities, as well as gain knowledge of the great masters.

Science and Nature Goals

• Providing children with activities to enhance their natural curiosity and interest in themselves and their environment (animals, plants, natural world)
• Learning about our body's "insides" (circulatory, respiratory, digestive system)
• Working with magnets, prisms, float and sink work
• Studying dinosaurs
• Following seasons, seasonal changes in natural world
• Caring for classroom pets, observing various life cycles (ex: hatching chicks, hatching cocoons, watching tadpoles grow/develop)