Wir schreiben Deutsch!

Yesterday I told you about the German lessons I created for my children.  Today I want to tell you about two books we're using for book work and how we're making them fun.

Moonshine, my 8.5 year old, is using "Fun with German" by Lee Cooper.  It's written for English speakers, and the point is to be able to pick it up and read in German from the very first page.  It's empowering, it's colorful, and it's fun.  It actually is.  It touches on pronunciation, starting with very small steps, and continuing on in such a simple manner that before long you are actually reading and understanding quite a bit of German.

Moonshine is LOVING it.  She can't get enough of it lately.  It's what I find her doing first thing in the morning and the last thing in the afternoon.  We're both hoping it will help her feel even more empowered.  She is already tickled by the fact that she can now read in German.

We're taking each page and turning it into a lesson-- reading it aloud many times, copying the writing and the picture, underlining whatever words she wants to underline-- those new to her or ones she thinks are new to her-- and sometimes adding in a new word that she might need help pronouncing.  We're using colored pencils to make it more fun.  And I'm doing it along with her in my own book.  My kids really enjoy embarking on a project together with mom, it feels special and important.  And she's so proud of herself already!

Here's what her first few lessons look like:






And then she noticed there were so many words that mean "the" -- so I explained and we made a page for them.  In Moonshine's drawing below, the gender neutral quality of das is illustrated by a "suitcase" she says.




The thing about this book is that you don't have to work hard to make it exciting.  The pages in the actual book look pretty much the same:



And 30-odd pages later you're able to read something of this length:

 

Doesn't it look like a fun book?  I can't say enough good things about Lee Cooper's books.  They are all like this-- Fun With Spanish (two books), Fun With Italian, Fun With French... They're old enough to be out of print, but there are still many cheap copies to be found in a quick Google search.



Sunburst, my 11.5 year old, is using the Das Sind Wir readers by Peter Oram.  He created these German readers for use in Waldorf schools in the UK, and they are very well done.  Each book (there are two) has fifteen lessons.  They're meant for Grades 5-6, I think, and they assume that the child has some grasp of the language already... which is perfect for Sunburst.

Each lesson has a theme (waking up, school, my city) and at the end of each lesson are the related vocabulary words and phrases for that lesson.  In the back of the book there are some questions pertaining to each lesson, meant for the teacher's use, as well as a lesson by lesson glossary.

My only problem with this book is that it assumes the teacher is fluent in German.  All the material directed at the instructor is also in German... and while I get the gist of some of it, I haven't had the time or the inclination to really sit down and fully grasp how I'm supposed to be using it.  So I'm making it up.

First we read the lesson together.  She likes to read it in German and then translate it aloud to the English equivalent.  Then we take this lesson and pretend it's a letter which we have to reply to-- at the end of each lesson, as part of the reading, are questions based on the reading (Where do you live?  What do you play?  Are you fully awake?) And so we use those as a jumping off point and write a letter to the boy in the lesson.  If he talks about his town, then we do, too.  And we make sure to answer his questions.  We keep our letters in simple little notebooks.

Just to give you an idea, here are a couple of Sunburst's (uncorrected)"letters."

 

This is really fun for Sunburst, and again, she loves that I'm doing it with her. We compare what we wrote, and it's really interesting to see how different our letters become. We're doing one lesson per week, and that seems like plenty. Her goal is to be able to check out books at the library and read to her heart's content. I think by the time she's finished with these books she'll have no problem. Certainly she will be able to check out German early readers after only a few more lessons.

You can find all of Peter Oram's books at the website Starborn Books.

(This is my first post with the new Blogger interface, and it's giving me fits.  So if it looks too wonky on your end, please let me know.  Thanks!)

Wir sprechen Deutsch!

Today I found myself acting out a wild story about a boy who wanted to make a birthday cake for his friend, with candles, but he didn't know how old she was. He called her on the phone, but it was a bad connection. So he mailed her a letter, but he forgot to use a stamp. Then he decided to go ring her doorbell, but the doorbell was broken. So he knocked... nothing. Then he began pounding and banging on the door, but no one heard because the mother was running the vacuum cleaner.

Imagine, I'm standing there banging furiously on the dining room door with one hand while with the other I am running the vacuum cleaner and pretending not to hear. Meanwhile my kids are calling out suggestions, laughing and smiling, and completely engaged. They love it so much, and I'm so pleased-- because we're actually, at this moment, homeschooling. And what I'm presenting is their German lesson.

The funny thing is, I don't speak German. Not really. I took it in college, but outside of class, I didn't use it. Not once. And if you don't use it... well, in twenty years time it just seems to float away on the breeze. It's not the most useful language you can learn as an American living in the Southwestern US. Spanish would have been a more obvious choice, and I probably would have stayed that course had my friend and I not met these cute Austrian brothers at the opera. The college crush, both blind and fleeting-- it was as good a reason as any to learn a language. Even if I never used it again... and I didn't. Not until I decided to teach it to my kids, and then I had to start over, from scratch.

When we lived in the US and my girls were younger, I used songs and games and very basic attempts at language introduction. For resources I googled fingerplays and checked out picture books and cds from the library. I sang them songs and made up silly little games. My goal was not to create fluent speakers. I simply wanted them to play with the idea of language-- hear new sounds and try to make them. If they learned a few words and had fun doing it, then that was a bonus.

And then we moved to Switzerland, and my focus changed. For the first year we honestly didn't even need German. Hardly anyone spoke to us in the city, and so our language usage was pretty much confined to asking for a bathroom and reading ingredient labels on food packaging. Now that we've been living "auf dem Land" for the last year, learning the language has become somewhat of a necessity.

It's hard teaching a language when you don't speak it fluently yourself. We've tried just about everything-- Rosetta Stone, books, cds, random internet resources... The materials I've found just aren't enlivened enough. So I decided to make my own. I've started putting together a few ideas from here and there, including psychology research on language acquisition, and the girls can't get enough of these lessons. They love them. They beg for them. And it makes me so happy.

And just in the last few weeks that I have been implementing this, I have seen a HUGE change in the girls' language abilities. And in my own. I'm far from fluent-- but I think we're definitely onto something VERY good here. Even the neighbors have been commenting to me about how well the girls are speaking lately, and I couldn't be more encouraged by this. It's astounding, really. Every day they come in from playing to tell me excitedly that they understood something someone said, or said something that was understood. They are starting to feel empowered again. Imagine that! It makes me cry, really.

Basically, I'm telling very short, simple, thematic stories twice a week. I have two characters, Johann and Julia, and the stories revolve around their comical interactions with each other.

My rules for the stories are:

1. I have to tell the whole story in German (as best as I can).
2. It has to build on words they already know.
   
3. The words have to be contextually connected and useful.
4. It has to be simple.
   
5. It has to be funny.
   

So I tell the story, acting out bits and drawing pictures and words on the chalkboard as I go (usually with a dictionary in my lap), and then the girls and I draw the picture together on paper, purposefully making it as ridiculous as possible. We discuss which words to write-- we only pick a few (less really is more), and I make sure to include verbs. I label my paper, Sunburst copies the words from my paper, and then I help Moonshine label hers.

We've been doing two stories per week, on Monday and Wednesday, and then on Friday the girls are required to put on a very short play for me from the week's lessons. They love this. Plus it gives them a reason to review the work and practice using the language in context and without judgment. Nothing kills the joy of learning a language like judgment. So we don't do that. We just try, together. We keep it fun and silly, and we make complete fools of ourselves. Learning a language requires that above all else-- the courage to look/sound stupid.

Here are some of our pages. Like I said, my stories are pretty ridiculous. I'm sharing all three versions (mine, Sunburst's, and Moonshine's) because I can't choose between them. Anyway, when we feel like we have enough pages we'll bind them together in a book, along with some other (not so exciting) pages we made last year.

Basic greetings, including Swiss and the triple Swiss kiss:







At the Swimming Pool:







A (very strange) Race-- this tied in nicely with a our week of lions:






Cooking with the Baker:






Feeding Chickens:






Bird Party (tied in with bird fables):






These lessons are the heart and soul of our language learning. And they're working. We're really starting to speak and understand German!

We're also doing some fun book work with the language to work on our reading skills-- but I'll have to share that tomorrow.

Long, toxic day

I had hoped to blog a pile of backlogged stuff today. I had also hoped to teach today. None of those things came to fruition. Today we woke to the banging of pipes before our house filled up with smoke and I had to load the kids, rats, and birds into the car and leave. We didn't actually go anywhere, just down the road a bit. Where can you go with a car full of caged pets? Nowhere, really... well, maybe Petsmart. But no, not in Switzerland.

My house was pretty toxic for hours. The workers claimed to be cleaning the boiler or something to that effect in an apologetic broken mixture of English, French, and German. All I know is that it was awful, and so we sat around in the car reading and knitting. It was cold and overcast, so when the sun finally came out the kids ran around and visited the horses. I made trips back to the house to open windows and turn on fans and forage quickly for snacks. I ended up with an insane headache in the process, but by three o'clock the air and smell had cleared enough for us to bring the pets back inside and have lunch. And by then I was too exhausted to do anything.

I had such fun lessons planned for the day... but this is the kind of curve ball that life throws sometimes. Homeschooling is never separate from life. Imagine the kinds of things kids can learn from strange situations like this. Had they been in school, they would have missed the whole thing.

Instead, they learned about the dangers of smoke inhalation, engaged in a discussion about carbon monoxide, and while we've never talked about fire drills, they got to experience one without all the bells and whistles. (Note to self: check batteries in smoke alarms.) And what a surprise that my children can actually put their shoes on and get outside quickly. Some days have left me wondering about that, but now I really know it's possible.

While we were parked down the road the kids watched a horse being trained. They deepened their friendship with the woman who works with horses. Now that their German has improved she appears to be friendlier with them (and me, too). She met the rats and gave us a free outdoor cage for them, and then invited the kids to help groom the horses. Finally befriending this woman, after trying for one year, was a very big deal.

Our local homeschooling friend showed up around 2pm (there is only one other homeschooling family in our state), and she brought me an essential oil mix that I could drink for my fierce headache. I have never actually imbibed essential oils before, so that was pretty strange but also wonderful. I'm looking forward to buying some at the store next time I go to town.

We also learned the German word for parakeet - Wellensittich - and the German word for carbon monoxide detector - Kohlenmonoxid Detektor. We made a cursory search for one awhile back, but we've never been able to find them in the stores here like you can in the US. Now that I know what it's called... maybe that will help, because I think we really shouldn't go another day without one, especially since the oil boiler lives under our daughter's bedroom. And today we learned just how paper thin our floors and walls really are.

Long, toxic day. Thank goodness for unschooling. We learned so much.

Seven songs to learn by tomorrow

picture from www.sengers.ch


I just received the songs we'll be singing at the lantern walk tomorrow night. God help me. They are all in Swyzerdütsch!

My neighbor was sweet enough to bring them over this morning along with some turnips to carve for the children's Laterne.
(And if she's reading this, "HALLO! DANKE VIELMAL.")

Luckily, a couple of the songs we are familiar with...in English... of course the English versions of these songs are different than the high German versions. And then I must add that the Swiss German versions are even more different, even so from the high German, including different notes. Is it too much to ask that they use the same notes?

We're going to spend the day working on it... in between writing and cleaning and cooking and blowing our noses...

Here's but one of the songs.
I think it says something about a turnip light... and when the wind blows the light out, you go home. But ask me how to pronounce these words, and my eyes go round and my mouth drops open.

Rääbeliechtli, Rääbeliechtli, wo gahsch hii?
I die tunkli Nacht, ohni Sterneschy.
Da mues mys Liechtli sy.

Rääbeliechtli, Rääbeliechtli, wo bisch gsii?
Dur d Straass duruuf un s Gässli ab.
Gäll, Liechtli, lösch nüd aab.

Rääbeliechtli, Rääbeliechtli, wänn gasch hei?
Wänn de Büswind blaast
und mer s Liechtli löscht,
dann gann i wider hei.

Seven songs. Many with multiple verses. I'm only freaking out a little bit.


The above turnip lantern is borrowed from the Swiss Räbechilbi site. For more turnips, go visit the site HERE. They are amazing!

If you know the author/copyright owner of the Rääbeliechtli song, please let me know so I can give them full credit. Thanks!

Language acquisition

How do you tell your three-year-old is picking up some foreign language skills? Oh, he'll tell you.

Kitty Bill threw a wild tantrum out in a public park the other day. He's been amping up the tantrums over the last few months, so that wasn't news-- he's been seriously displaced by this move. What struck me is that he chose to throw this tantrum in German.

It was time to leave, and he plainly didn't want to go. So he threw himself down on the ground and screamed at us with all his might, "NEIN! NEIIIIIN! NEIN, BITTE! BITTE, NEIIIN!"

After I stopped laughing (I know, but it was too cute) I scooted down on the ground next to him and asked him what he was so upset about. Did he even know what he was saying? He said, "No, please, I don't want to go."

________

We're currently living above a restaurant staffed by a large Italian family, or several small families, it's hard to tell. They have convinced Kitty Bill that his name is Mimi, because that's what they squeal to him whenever they see him. "Mimi, mimi." And he says it right back to them, and they do this touchy, touchy thing and give him a fresh bread roll. Every time, sometimes several times a day. The kid is up to his ears in bread rolls. And then when they part he says "Ciao, bello" right back to them.

________

Tonight he asked me to read a board book in German, that was actually IN German, then he moved on to our worn copy of Maisy Drives the Bus, in English, which he wanted read in German. "You read it to me," I said.

"Maisy drives the bus, German. Schlack and kluck and nacknock bus German." It's definitely weird. He sort of spits when he says it, so he has the basic idea.

More games

We're having some more off-time over at our little homeschool. I managed to pass that nasty flu-bug to each of the kids, and they've been coughing their heads off for the last two days. Anything that looks even remotely like school is out of the question, unless, of course it's some kind of a game.

Enter Kitty Bill, the tiny mastermind. He has been taken with the Langwister cards and has begun distributing them throughout the house. Both his placement of the cards and the successive attempts to clean up said cards has prompted further game play.

We used this verse from A Child's Seasonal Treasury.

We're stepping over stepping stones, 1, 2, 3
We're stepping over stepping stones, come with me
The river's very fast, and the river's very wide
We'll step across the stepping stones to reach the other side.

Today, the girls pulled themselves together enough to play "Cross the River" with me, and they had a fun time and completely forgot to cough for a few minutes. It was great.

We spaced the cards out like stepping stones across the rug in our main room, and in order to "Cross the River" we had to call out the name of the cards before we could step on them. In German, of course, although I watched Moonshine do it in English and it seemed just as challenging to her in either language. I wonder if that has something to do with her age and general dreaminess. It never occurred to me before that four-year-olds would need to stop and rifle through that filing system in their brains to come up with a word they so obviously know in their native tongue to match it to a picture. It was interesting to observe.

When they're feeling better, I'd like to take this game to a more social, cooperative level with them. Give them the stack of cards and a task (ex. Get from Point A to point B without touching the floor.) And then let them use the cards as they need them. Maybe give Moonshine a couple of "magic" cards (like free spaces) so she can hold her own. It would be great to have more kids to help problem solve, but for now, we'll just have to work with what we have.

I was also thinking that the stepping stones idea would work well for math sums. I like the idea of having a sum on each card, and then they have to announce a problem for it (ex. "16" on the card, and they can say "10+6" or "2x8" or "20-4".) From whole to parts. I bet that would be fun.

The other game, the picking up game, doesn't have much to it. The cards are tired and they want to sleep. So the kids need to collect the cards, "Die Katze ist müde." "Guten Nacht, die kleine Katze." And so on... I'm learning if you say anything with enough enthusiasm it catches like fire.

Foreign languages

This is our good friend Poppy. She's a little shy, but when we can coax her to come out and play, she sings with us.

Poppy has been helping me teach the girls German this year. I'm no expert, so I'm glad to have her help. I took three semesters of German in college, but that was years ago. I'm so rusty and out of practice, that I wasn't sure I should even attempt to try to teach it to my kids. That perfectionsim held me back until this year when I finally realized that it was okay if I didn't get the grammar quite right. If I messed up the gender or verb tense, my kids would live through it.

I'm not here to be the expert. My kids don't have to walk away from their childhood with a perfect and fluent grasp of a foreign language. There is no test. This isn't about being perfect. The way I see it, it's about making different sounds with our voices. It's about listening to those sounds, adjusting our senses, and having fun with it. Yes. Having fun. Isn't that what learning is all about?

Once I stopped trying to get it just right, Poppy and I ran with it. So far (and forgive my lack of umlaut-making, etc.) we have learned:

"Where is Thumbkin?" or "Wo ist der Daumen?"
(alternating an English version with one in Deutche)

Where is Thumbkin, where is Thumbkin?
Here I am. Here I am.
How are you today, Thumbkin?
Very well, I thank you.
Goodbye. Goodbye.

Wo ist der Daumen, wo ist der Daumen?
Ich bin hier. Ich bin hier.
Guten Tag wie geht's du?
Danke schon, mir geht's gut.
Auf Wiedersehen. Auf Wiedersehen.

And then a song Poppy made up to teach the girls Deutche, and in turn, they sing it in English to teach her English (she convieniently only speaks Deutche.) At the end of each verse Poppy pops back into her cone.

Poppy's Song
Hallo, hallo, hallo mein freund
Hallo mein freund wie heiBt du?
Wie gehts, wie gehts, wie gehts mein freund?
Auf Wiedersehen! Bis bald!

Hello, hello, hello my friend.
Hello my friend. What's your name?
How are, how are, how are you friend?
Goodbye. See you soon.

For Christmas (and beyond) we sang O'Tannenbaum. Mary Thienes-Schunemann does a lovely job with this song in The Christmas Star, a book of Christmas carols from the Naturally You Can Sing series. There is at least one other German carol in the book, but we haven't tackled that one yet.

More recently I picked up a copy of Teach Me... German, booklet and cd, and so far Poppy has taught us to sing Bruder Jakob, which has fast become a family favorite. Sunburst even tries to play it by ear on the piano.

There are also plenty of German songs/poems for kids on the web HERE and HERE.

In the Fall I'm hoping to introduce a bit of Spanish into the mix, maybe crafting a companero for Poppy. I only took one semester of that in college, so I had better get cracking.

**To create your own Poppy doll, check out the punch-in-cup pattern from Making Dolls by Sunnhild Reinckens.

Tapadh leat

Today Sunburst worked on her Scotland project. She has been speaking in Scots Gaelic (apparently different than Irish Gaelic) for three days now. Not complete sentences, mind you. Assuredly not anywhere near the correct pronunciation, (I wouldn't even have a clue about that,) but in bits and pieces here and there as she can work it in, opening the book each time and requesting things like lite (porridge) and uisge (water.)

We talked through the planning stages of her display board, and she had me writing out a rough list of words/phrases she might want to recopy to include on it. She sat across the couch from me thumbing through a book on the Loch Ness Monster while I held the other book open and stared at those Gaelic words long and hard trying to spell them right ...uan, uisge, Ciamar a tha thu?

Thinking I was done, I closed the book and started to walk away, "Oh wait, tapad leet!" She yells at me. What? I looked at her blankly trying to interpret. "Thank you, tapad leet." Huh? "Write that one down too." Oh! I opened the book back up and there it was, on the bottom of the page, Tapadh leat. I hadn't heard that one before.

How on earth did she remember that?

Nothing gets past these kids. They remember every story, every promise, every everything. It's easy to see in the girls, as they come up with some new thing to amaze us with everyday (like knitting blind-folded!) The jury has been out on Kitty Bill, though. I mean, we weren't sure if we would be blessed with another sound mind. It's risky business, this gene pool lottery. But it looks like he's a clever one too. He's already watching to see what he can get away with, and as soon as we turn our heads --Zoooom! He's gone after some item of contraband, and he knows it, because he keeps looking over his shoulder to see if he's getting caught. At seven months! These kids can already outwit us, and they're not even close to being teenagers yet.

We are so screwed.