Activities to help your little ones learn German one afternoon at a time * Tales from my German classroom * Plus a sprinkle of travel adventures thrown in!
I often do a sea life theme with me pre-k/kinders in the fall. I use the books about Kleiner weißer Fisch(Little White Fish) by Guido van Genechten and have written about some of the things I do in the unit in this post.
To help introduce the sea animals in the books, I’ve made a set of posters. Here is a selection:
After I introduce the words that go along with a specific book, we play a game of Gefunden!
I love that the books introduce simple vocabulary in addition to the sea life … colors, games, and even saying “goodbye”. We read a different book each week for 3 – 5 weeks, depending on what else is on out schedule. The children enjoy the familiarity of the adorable Little White Fish 🙂
Singing this classic children’s song is a great way to teach my pre-k/kindergarten classes about body parts.
I like to back into the song, teaching the parts of the face first. It’s nice to repeat these a number of times, because they only show up in the song one time, while the others repeat three times!
Augen (eyes)
Ohren (ears)
Nase (nose)
Mund (mouth)
We repeat those a couple of times. Then I point to them on me in a random order and ask if it is X? First I do it right, then I start to make “mistakes” 🙂 For example, I point to my nose and say: “Ist das die Nase?” They all say: “Jaaaaaa!” But later I’ll point to my eyes and say: “Sind das die Ohren?” Most of the children recognize the mistage and say: “Nein!”
Then we move on to the bigger body parts:
Kopf (head)
Schulter (shoulders)
Knie (knees)
Fuß (foot)
Once we have the vocabulary down, we sing the song! We usually start seated and then sing it again standing. This year we repeated the song one last time at the end of the lesson. It was a nice way to reinforce it. And next week, those facial features will come in handy when we start making our Kürbislaternen (Jack-o-Lanterns)!
It’s also fun to read Eric Carle’s book Von Kopf bis Fuß (From Head to Toe) with this lesson.
I always send home a coloring page for the children. Here is one with all 8 body parts. You can download it for free below!
Another song I introduce early on with my pre-k/kindergarten classes is “Meine Finger” (My fingers).
First we practice counting to 5 on our fingers. Then when we do the actions at the end of each verse, we do them five times while counting to five again.
I don’t follow the original lyrics exactly. I like to reuse vocabulary that the children know and add in a few funny ones. So with our funny little fingers, we clap (klatschen), pat (patschen), and count (zählen). Sometimes we also tickle (kitzeln), fidget (zappeln), scratsch (kratzen), knock (klopfen), and even play the piano (Klavier spielen)! Just plug in the verb at the end of the last sentence!
Here are the lyrics:
Meine Finger, meine Finger
sind so lustig kleine Dinge
Ich hab' fünf an jeder Hand!
Mit meinen Finger kann ich ... klatschen!
I also always show each hand with the line “Ich habe fünf an jeder Hand!”
Here is a video of the original song. One day, I’ll record our class version!
I sing a lot of songs with my pre-k/kindergarten class. We always start by learning our Begrüßungslied– our Hello Song. I often pair that with a common children’s song: “Unser kleiner Bär im Zoo.” In the original song, the bear hops and stomps and dances. But I like to change the actions to practice the ones we use in our Hello Song. When we sing it, the bear claps, pats his legs, and stomps. It’s great for review. And the kiddos love it!
Here are the lyrics that I use:
Unser kleiner Bär im Zoo der schläft ganz tief und fest Schnarcht mal laut, mal leise, nach der Bärenweise Doch wenn unser Bär erwacht, dann schaut mal was er macht
Er klatscht, er klatscht, er klatscht, er klatscht, er klatscht den ganzen Tag Er klatscht, er klatscht, er klatscht, er klatscht, er klatscht den ganzen Tag
Unser kleiner Bär im Zoo der schläft ganz tief und fest Schnarcht mal laut, mal leise, nach der Bärenreise Doch wenn unser Bär erwacht, dann schaut mal was er macht
Er patscht, er patscht, er patscht, er patscht, er patscht den ganzen Tag Er patscht, er patscht, er patscht, er patscht, er patscht den ganzen Tag
Unser kleiner Bär im Zoo der schläft ganz tief und fest Schnarcht mal laut, mal leise, nach der Bärenweise Doch wenn unser Bär erwacht, dann schaut mal was er macht
Er stampft, er stampft, er stampft, er stampft, er stampft, den ganzen Tag Er stampft, er stampft, er stampft, er stampft, er stampft den ganzen Tag Er patscht, er patscht, er patscht, er patscht, er patscht den ganzen Tag Er patscht, er patscht, er patscht, er patscht, er patscht den ganzen Tag Er klatscht, er klatscht, er klatscht, er klatscht, er klatscht den ganzen Tag Er klatscht, er klatscht, er klatscht, er klatscht, er klatscht den ganzen Tag
Here is a little poster I like to use when I introduce the song. I talk about the little bear (kleiner Bär) and the zoo (Zoo). I ask the children what the bear does in winter. So many of them already know the word hibernate! Then I tell them that our bear is sleeping and snoring – sometimes loudly (laut), sometimes quietly (leise). But when he wakes up – just watch what he does! You can download the poster and teaching document below:
I’m finally coming out of my fog from the end of the school year. And I just realized that the Summer Olympic Games will be starting in a few weeks!
Four – make that five – years ago, I made some vocabulary cards for the Summer Olympics in Rio. I thought I would repost them here. You can read more about them in the original post.
There are 8 sports covered in this packet of materials. You can use them as flashcards, play games like Memory and Go Fish, and also solve some Purzelwörter – scrambled word puzzles.
Some of the words I chose are not the official names of the sports. As this is meant for an introduction to vocabulary, I went with simpler forms. For example, instead of Leichtathletik, I used Laufen. Clearly, Leichtathletik encompasses a whole lot more than just running, but for young children, it made sense to keep it simple!
With new classroom rules in place for covid, we are all having to get creative! I recently came up with a little “Hide & Seek” game that I’ve been using with my pre-k/kindergartners.
I use a set of vocab posters I already have. For example, we’ve been working on the weather. So there are 8 – 10 words they are learning. After we review the words, I choose one to “seek”. For example, it’s been very gray and snowy here, so we’ve been looking for the sun a lot 🙂 I shuffle the vocab posters and then hold them in front of me, so I can’t see them. Then I start asking, “Ist das die Sonne?” They answer “Ja!” or “Nein!” And after they have found the sun and answered “Ja!” we then call out, “Gefunden!”
I made a little poster with the words “Gefunden” on it to help them learn it. Tomorrow when we play the game, I’ll hold up the sign after they find the word 🙂
After updating the weather materials to include wintery words, I decided to make some bigger weather cards. Fitting all eight words on to one page seemed to be a bit of a squish, so I’ve spread them out over two pages. They work better for younger learners.
I’ve made them in color and black & white, in case the children prefer to color the cards themselves. They can be used as flashcards or print two sets and use them to play memory.
Last spring I posted some materials for weather-watching. But as it was already April, I did not include winter weather. Well, we’re at the beginning of a big Nor’easter here, about to get a whole lot of snow! So I wanted to add words for snow and ice to the checklist and weather cards. Here are the new materials!
If you are looking for the older materials without wintery weather words, they are in this post.
I often ask my young students what kind of weather they see out the window. (Was sehen wir aus dem Fester?) This allows them to answer in a simpler, more consistent noun-form. It avoids the mix of answers like “Die Sonne scheint.” – “Es schneit.” – “Es ist nebelig.” Once they master the nouns, it will be easier to move into the various sentence structures.
I also have a video to review the words. The word Eis is not included, however it is pronounced pretty much the same as the English “ice”.
Our winter break has ended, however we are taking a week of remote learning before heading back into the building. And so I wanted to give my students some activities to get German fresh again without having to use screen time. They are getting enough virtual meetings and online assignments already.
Since my 5th & 6th graders really like to color, I created a snowman read & color activity. To help them along, I added a second page of vocabulary.
To make sure I had set it up correctly, I had Hippo try the activity for his at-home German lesson yesterday. It went very well!
German in the Afternoon Activities 