FAQ

The World of Kids (WoKi) is a day care centre in Herzogenaurach. There are now two buildings, each with a nursery area and a kindergarten area. In WoKi 1 there is also a forest group. This group has its own group room in the WoKi, which is only used during drop-off and pick-up times and during thunderstorm and storm warnings.

The two day care centres are run by KiKu Trägergesellschaft mbH, based in Nuremberg. Our cooperation partner for the two facilities is adidas. The aim of this cooperation is to provide childcare, education, care and support for 250 Adidas families, directly on the Adidas premises.

In doing so, it is important to both cooperation partners to create above-average framework conditions. This includes a fresh kitchen, a specialist-child ratio above the legal requirement, large and open rooms, additional educators who enrich the multi-professional team as movement educators, curative educators and on the topic of nutrition, school, further education. The WoKi team brings with it an enormous diversity of training, professional experience and life experiences. Through a bilingual team, we are able to accompany the children bilingually throughout the day.

08:00 – 09:45: Arrival time and open breakfast
09:45 – 10:00: Morning circle
10:00 – 11:30: Morning activities
11:45 – 12:00: Lunch circle
12:00 – 13:00: Lunch
13:00 – 14:30: Afternoon activities
14:30 – 17:30: Pick-up time
14:30 – 15:30: Snack
15:30 – 17:30: Free play time

8:00 – 9:30: Arrival and breakfast
9:30: Morning circle
9:45 – 11:00: Morning activities
11:00 – 11:30: Gathering in the group
11:30: Lunch
12:00 – 14:30: Bedtime/ Free Play
14:00 – 15:00: Snack
15:00 – 16:15: Free play/ pick-up time

7.30 am – Drop off and care at the Atrium Woki Kindergarten 

8 am – Drop Off and supervision at the Fox Room 

• Check if it is possible to go into the forest.  
  If there is a thunderstorm warning for the morning, the Fox group will stay in the Woki.  
  In case of warnings for the afternoon, the group comes back already at noon.  
  In case of wind force 6 or wind speed (not gusts).
  of 39 km/h or more and in case of danger of snow breakage, the Fox group also stays in the Woki. 
  In case of very cold temperatures, a new decision will be made daily as to how long the Fox group will stay outside.
• Set up the handcart (smartphone, iPads, first aid kit in the backpack, high visibility vests, fruit).

9 am – Departure to the forest

• Those arriving after 9 am will be accepted/checked in only at the first waiting point – at the meadow.

9:45 am – Arrival in the forest

• Free play and breakfast
• Setting up the place (water station, preparing breakfast with the help of the children, disinfecting the tables and toilets, stove if necessary, sweeping if necessary, etc.).
• (Danger) check of the place.

10.15 am – morning circle 

10.30 am – free play/ projects/ activities

12.00 pm – Lunch, followed by “quiet time”

• Children are actively involved in setting the table, etc.
• Children wash their hands before eating.
• Pedagogues sit at the table with the children during the meal, provide support as needed and ensure that the table culture is observed.
• A teacher hands out the food in large bowls to the tables, measures temperature, etc. 
• Each child in turn takes something from the lunch. No child has to “taste”! For other children’s rights at lunch, see Constitution.
• Children clean up their own space, teachers assist as needed.
• Lunch breaks are taken before or after the meal.
• Quiet time = quiet phase after lunch, picture book viewing, mediation, quiet music, etc.

1.15 pm – “Foxies kompletti – off to the WoKi” we leave the forest

2 pm – 5.30 pm – arrival and supervision in the Woki  

• Snack (2.30-3.30 pm) and free play in the Woki, possibility for retreat and rest in the library.

Are there still parties until the end of the year?

Yes, of course! Over the next few days and weeks, there will be a number of celebrations at WoKi.

After celebrating a spooky and happy Halloween, we also had St. Martin’s Day on the agenda. We celebrated these festivities in the different areas. The teachers presented the story of St. Martin (day careand kindergarten) and for a snack we had delicious milk rolls that could be shared in the middle. On Thursday, the forest group celebrated St. Martin’s Day on the grounds of the forest group -with delicious punch from the woki kitchen and treats from the parents.

Next, we celebrate St. Nicholas. This festival is also celebrated with the children in their respective areas.

Throughout the Advent season, we look forward to your visits and activities in our kindergartens. You can sing together with the children, bake cookies or look at a book. You have already received the information from your area manager. Anyone else who would like to help is welcome to contact Adam or Marie.

The Foxies are also looking forward to your visit and activities in the forest. You can get all the information from Kristin here.

On 8.12. we would like to organize a small Christmas party with you. We will start at 3.00 pm. Please pick up your children in the respective areas between 2.30 and 3.00 pm. More information will follow.

Please note: we will check the weather forecast at the beginning of the week. If the weather is very bad, we will have to cancel the event in this setting and will celebrate with the children in the areas.

Which festivals are generally celebrated and why?

Every year, we think about how we can organize various festivals and celebrations. As KinderzentrenKunterbuntis a so-called independent provider, we do not have any fixed regulations that require us to celebrate certain festivals. We therefore decide according to the children, their interests and their stage of development.

A big summer party is always a firm fixture in our annual calendar. We want to spend an exciting afternoon with you, dear parents, your children, the whole team and our colleagues from the administration. This party mainly takes place outside in both gardens. The children’s feedback and our assessment, e.g. whether there should be popcorn, slush ice cream and candy floss at the same time, are the main factors in the selection of the various stations 😉 For the first time this year, the children from both kindergartens and the Fox Group voted democratically on the theme for the summer party. There was a children’s conference to collect and prioritize themes. They were then able to cast their votes on a ballot paper. Under the motto: Unicorns, Animals and Pinatas, we all celebrated a fantastic party together and are already very excited to see what next year’s theme will be.

Since WoKi was founded in 2013, there has always been a second major festival. Always alternating between St. Martin’s Day and an Advent festival. Since last year, we have decided that there will always be an Advent festival, weather permitting. A little background information: a lantern procession is very nice and definitely a highlight for everyone involved. But we are not a daycare center with 30 children and families. We have 250 children. If around 200 families want to come, with siblings, grandma and grandpa, other relatives/friends, etc., we very quickly reach 400-600 people. We have tried these processions. It’s dark and sometimes scary for the children with so many people. Singing together, well, you can imagine that too. The bottom line is that it’s very stressful, there are far too many people, you can’t walk together because the first people are already arriving back at the woki while the last ones in line haven’t been able to start walking yet.

That’s why we decided against this big event and would rather celebrate a kind of Christmas market with you in our garden. Provided the weather is good. Last year, we also found that it was too loud with so many people in the woki, too chaotic and the areas sometimes got very dirty with wet clothes and shoes. All in all, not as contemplative as we would all like and also unfavorable indoors at this time of year in terms of infection protection. We will therefore check the weather forecast in advance and, if necessary, celebrate exclusively in the areas with the children.

How are the festivals selected?

As described above, we celebrate what the children are currently interested in. Carnival, Easter, Halloween, St. Nicholas and Advent are always celebrated in the respective areas with the children. These celebrations are particularly exciting because of the costumes and, of course, the presents:

We also always pick up on new ideas from children, families or colleagues.

If colleagues in the teams would like to present and celebrate a festival from their home country, individual departments also celebrate extra festivals, such as Diwali. If you would like to introduce us to a festival and celebrate it with us, please get in touch with your department head.

I should add that we can’t celebrate all the festivals in the world every year. As a highlight, these events are something very special for the children. Keeping this excitement and tension at a constant level would be too much for the children. 

That’s why we’ll be surprised by the highlights we’ll be celebrating in the coming months.

How are the children involved? What do the day care do?

Basically, all children are involved in the preparation and implementation according to their level of development and personal interests. Some children want to design and hang up decorations and materials, other children want to learn and perform a choreography, other children want to help with cooking and baking. There are always lots of exciting activities within this framework.

In the day care, the children are also actively involved, for example when they help to mix dough or cut out cookies.

With the younger children, it is always important to note that we cannot plan activities where parents come to the nursery for a few hours. The children at this age don’t understand why another mom is now in the group, but their own mom isn’t there. And then it’s always other adults. This would cause stress and confusion for the children. That’s why, for example, the Advent activities with parents only take place in the kindergarten.

We are always happy to spend special days together with the children and wish you a Merry Christmas.

Your WoKi team

The operation of a day care centre is subject to various legal regulations at the state and federal level. These include, for example, the Bavarian Law on the Education, Upbringing and Care of Children in Kindergartens, other Day Care Facilities and in Day Care (BayKiBiG1), the Bavarian Education Plan2 and the Infection Protection Act3.

These laws regulate, among other things, how many specialists, i.e. trained educators, social pedagogues, curative pedagogues or curative education nurses, must work in the day care centre and how the relationship between the educators and the children must be in order to ensure the duty of supervision – of all children at all times.

The Bavarian Education Plan forms the basis of our pedagogical work. We want to make the children fit for school and above all for their lives. With the growing global processes and changes, this no longer works the way it did 20 years ago. We want to strengthen the children in their basic skills, for example, to promote their communication skills, their ability to deal with conflict and their resilience. In doing so, we use the innate curiosity and inquisitiveness to understand processes and situations in our living environment and to learn how we ourselves can have an impact in it.

From 2024 onwards, the WoKi will have closing days over Christmas, in the first week of January and on some bridging days. Furthermore, there will be three conception days with the entire team. On these days, the WoKi is closed and there is no childcare. These days are announced in the autumn of the previous year with the annual planning. This number of closed days is very low compared to other day care centres in Germany. The aim is to allow you a comparatively low number of closing days and at the same time to be able to give all colleagues their legally prescribed holiday entitlement.

You are welcome to send us your application via our application portal4 at any time. We add all applications to our waiting list. We can always allocate new places at the beginning of the kindergarten year. On 31.08. the pre-school children leave us and go to school. Then, from 1.9., the crèche children can transfer to the kindergarten and new children can start in the crèche. As each child needs an intensive settling-in period, only a few children can start each month, so that settling-in periods can also start in October, November, January or February. We try to accommodate your wishes, but we also have to take into account the structure of the whole group of children.

We can consider all applications that we receive by 15 January. We then fill the free places and check with KiKu and Adidas that the allocation process has been fair and that no family has been favoured or disadvantaged.

Occasionally, places become available during the year and we then allocate them according to our waiting list. These are always very few places. These are always very few places. All children who did not get a place during the year and in the allocation process, remain on the waiting list and will be involved in the process again next year.

You can find more information in our overview of the application process: Application Process

Settling in

For all families, starting in a day nursery or kindergarten means, first and foremost, an incisive new phase in life. In order to make this transition as pleasant as possible for everyone involved, there are various stages that are designed to make this journey easier.

We start with a parents’ evening where we explain and discuss with you all the important information about our procedures as well as the terms of the contract.

Approximately four weeks before you start, your primary educator will contact you. You will then have an initial meeting with him or her at the nursery and can discuss your child, his or her habits and needs in peace and quiet. The process of settling in will also be explained to you.

Please note that the settling-in process is oriented towards your child. Every child arrives at the nursery at a different place and with different levels of security. We need an intensive exchange with you in order to optimally adapt the settling in process to your child.

The following always applies: it only works together in an educational partnership. You are and will always remain the experts for your children. We contribute our expertise in developmental psychology and pedagogical principles and would like to support you as much as possible in preparing your child for the challenges of our world.

Framework

There are specific framework conditions for this cooperation which we as a day care centre must observe.

These include the obligation to report contagious diseases to the public health department. This means that you must inform us that your child is ill and what he or she has on the day the illness is detected. We have to pass this information on to the health authorities, among others. We also need the information in order to take appropriate countermeasures, e.g. more extensive cleaning by our cleaning company.

If your child is sick, he/she is not allowed to come to the day care centre. This is for the protection and health of your child and the other children and teachers. If the child falls ill during the time in the nursery, we will contact you to collect your child. We assure you that we always focus on the well-being of the child. Even if these illnesses occur at inconvenient times, you are still obliged to collect your child from the day care centre.

This also includes keeping to your booking time. We use this information to plan the specified specialist-child-ratio. We cannot guarantee this if families collect their children after their booking time or after our opening time. For a better structure and at the same time a kind of figurative consequence, we have introduced a yellow card system. Three yellow cards can be collected before we come together in a joint discussion and consider how we can find a solution. If no solution is found within this framework, we talk to KiKu and Adidas about terminating the care contract. More information on this can be found in our FAQ.

Exchange about your child’s development

Every day you will have a short exchange with your child’s teachers. It is important for both sides to talk about certain incidents or the child’s needs in order to be able to organise the day adequately. Speak to the teachers at any time if you have questions or feel insecure or anxious about a particular topic. If the setting at check-in or check-out is not appropriate, we can also organize a conversation in a quieter setting by arrangement.

In addition, we offer you a development talk twice a year. This is conducted by your primary teacher together with you. First of all, we are interested in your assessment of your child’s development over the last few months. Then we describe our observations from the nursery. Even if only one teacher conducts the interview with you, there is a professional exchange with the other colleagues beforehand, so that all observations are included in the overall impression.

For certain topics, we can also call in our experts at any time, e.g. on the subject of nutrition or special needs.

Development documentation

The core tasks of the educators include direct pedagogical work on the one hand and indirect work on the other. This includes, among other things, development documentation.

Twice a year, we use a standardised development form (Petermann and Petermann and Sismik/Seldak) to keep track of all areas of development and then to develop appropriate educational programmes. In addition to the standardised questionnaires, we also use free observations and documentation, which are then compared with the observations of other colleagues. In doing so, we always focus on the children’s resources. We want to promote these in a targeted way and thus strengthen the children.

The development documentation also includes learning stories and other portfolio pages for the children. Each child has a portfolio folder for the crèche time and then another one for the kindergarten time. This folder contains recorded educational moments and exciting experiences. The children have access to this documentation at all times and they are the only ones who are allowed to access their folder. Looking at this page encourages the children to reflect on their own learning and causes them to learn to reflect on their own behaviour (we talk about so-called meta-cognition here). At the same time, the children are incredibly proud of their successful learning processes.

WoKi opening hours are always determined by the current need of daycare. For this purpose, a corresponding survey is conducted once a year.

Unfortunately, personnel changes may lead to our opening hours being shortened for a certain period of time. This cut is a drastic one. Please be assured that we are well aware of this. Knowing about the enormous challenges you face in that case, we will always consider shortening our opening hours as something like a last resort. And yet, nonetheless, such a measure is absolutely necessary in order for us to maintain our service adequately and meet a certain staff-child ratio that is required by law. If we do not meet this ratio, we risk the supervision of your children, and that is something we are not allowed to do by any means.

Your booking hours are determined by your current need of daycare as well. You specify the booking period when you register your child at WoKi. These hours are binding for at least one year, since they will affect our personnel planning for the coming year. After one year, you can reduce or increase your booking hours, if you want to do so. In case you wish to increase the daycare hours for your child, we must first discuss it with the relevant department to see if we can realize this increase without jeopardizing the child-to provider ratio. Please note that it is very likely that many parents will have chosen to decide the same way as you in this matter.

We are obliged to have a certain number of educators (a certain number of whom, moreover, need to be specialists) for a certain number of children in order not to violate our duty of supervision. Whenever one or more children stay longer than they are supposed to, we would need to have more staff present at that specific overtime hours, which they will have to reduce again on other days, leading to the unpleasant fact that, as a consequence, we will not have these very colleagues available for the group on these days. Given such a large number of children, what it all boils down to is that a lot of time and a lot of resources are thus being occupied although they are actually needed elsewhere.

If for some reason you are having a hard time sticking to your booking hours, please feel free to contact us, so we can try solve the issue and find a solution that satisfies both sides.

In fact, parents having trouble adhering to booking hours has been a major challenge for us since the founding of WoKi. That is why we have decided to introduce “a yellow card system”. During the first week, we are willing to take an indulgent view of things, i.e. during this time we are ready to discuss with you why it was not possible  for you to keep within the booking hours when picking up your child. Please note that after this first week, we will issue a yellow card, as it were, every time you are late picking up your child. By “late” we mean you pick up your child five minutes out of your booking time (even if you are still within WoKi opening hours). Plus, you are “late”, simply if you are not within our opening hours, no matter how many minutes you are late. Exceptions are made for hospitalizations or unforeseen events, such as, for instance, a full closure of a street. A regular traffic jam will not be accepted as a justification. If you pick up a yellow card for the third  me, this means we will need to sit down and have a discussion with you on the matter, in order to find a solution. In the unlikely event of you and us not finding any solution that way, we are bound to talk to Kinderzentren Kunterbunt and adidas about a contract termination in your case.

Click here to register:
Application for World Of Kids

Overview of the application process – download here

List of Re-admission after illness – download here