Hallo und guten Tag!

Posted in Story hour, Uncategorized, Word Posters by

For years, I have been singing the same song with the Lesestunde and in the Pre-K / Kindergarten class I teach. I’ve been wanting to post about it, but I had to track down the source first!

It turns out that the woman who ran the Lesestunde while I was taking a maternity break found the song in a French book and translated it into German. No wonder I could never find it with an internet search! She was kind enough to send me images of the book and the song:

The song goes like this:

Hallo! * *  Und guten Tag! * *

Hallo! * * Und guten Tag! * *

Ich hoffe, es geht dir

Ich hoffe, es geht dir

Ich hoffe, es geht

Es geht dir gut! * *

* klatschen, stampfen, patschen (clap, stamp, pat) – zweimal

In the Lesestunde, I always start out by asking what the children would like to do: stampfen? klatschen? hüpfen? One little girl always likes to spin. Makes me dizzy, though!

When I sing it in the Montessori class, we always do the same actions in the same order: klatschen, stampfen, patschen. Right off the bat, we start learning numbers, because I’m always saying, “eins, zwei!” to make sure they don’t get too carried away. Especially with the stampfen. They love to stomp. And then it turns into jumping. We’re still working on that with the little ones 🙂

On the first day of German in the Montessori class, I start the lesson by teaching them the three actions. I made up word posters to help them learn the words:

I also send them home with a coloring page that has the words and the actions. There are two versions, but I like the one that uses the same images above.

You can download the PDF documents here:

Word posters: Begrüßungslied Wortschatzbilder GitA

Coloring pages: Begrüßungslied Malvorlage GitA

Viel Spaß!

Unser kleiner Bär im Zoo

Posted in Uncategorized, Word Posters by

I love using songs to teach and learn language.

I also find it rather difficult to teach songs German songs to my English-speaking students. Sometimes, they are actually quite complicated!

So this year in my Pre-K/Kindergarten class, I’m trying to repeat the songs more often. A lot more often. That is a hard thing for me to do! I love a good theme and have usually planned my lessons around a theme: colors, farm animals, numbers, holidays, etc. But by planning my lessons this way, I trap myself into a place where I am constantly introducing new vocabulary, new books, and new songs!

Even at this level, it’s really important to me that the children are getting something out of the class. At the very least, that they learn words that they will understand. Even better is when I hear them saying the words … phrases … sentences! But that will not happen without some repetition.

One of the songs I love to sing is “Unser kleiner Bär im Zoo” by Karsten Glück (from Die 30 Besten Spiel und Bewegungslieder, Vol. 1). I like to use it in week 2, so that we can review the actions in our hello song: klatschen, patschen, und stampfen. I always do “stampfen” last, so that we can stay low to the ground until the end. It helps to keep the little ones more in control of their bodies, too!

So this week (week 3), we’re going to sing it again, but in conjunction with a zoo theme. (More on that soon!)

I put together a visual to introduce the song. It includes an image of a zoo, plus a small (klein) and big (groß) bear. The little bear is sleeping, while the big bear (the Mama bear, I call her) is awake.

Unser kleiner Bär im Zoo mit Bildern-page-004

In this second lesson with the song, I plan to use the image again to add some vocabulary. Something like this, that focuses on the conjugated verb “schlafen” and also adds a yes/no question.

  • Unser kleiner Bär schläft.
  • Mama Bär schläft nicht.
  • Schläft er? Schläft sie?
  • Wer schläft? – Er schläft. Sie schläft nicht.

We’ll see how it goes!

You can download the PDF of the image plus the lyrics here: Unser kleiner Bär im Zoo mit Bildern – GitA

Viel Spaß!

Buchstabe Wiederholung: M / A / O / P

Posted in Alphabet, Uncategorized, Wiederholung: M-A-O-P by

I’ve been using a workbook that I found in Germany this summer to help me decide the order in which to teach the letters of the alphabet. It’s called Mein ABC Übungsheft by Christiane Wittenburg (Stark Verlag, 2013). I really like the way the workbook is designed, so that the letters are introduced according to the beginning sounds.

As you can see, the first four letters are: M – A – O – P.  You may notice that the letter B actually comes up much later in this workbook. I had already started with B before I discovered that I had this resource 🙂  So we’ll slip B back into the mix as another way to review when it comes up!

I should mention that we haven’t actually been using the workbook much itself. I’m mostly using it as a guide right now. The boys haven’t been too into workbooks lately. And I find that the more I can do that inspires them, the more they are willing to play along! But I’m glad to have it as a reference … and hopefully for the future when it they will be interested again!

After each letter or two, there is a review in the workbook. So I thought now would be a good time for us to also stop and do some review. I plan on taking one object from each of the four letter boxes to review each day at breakfast. We won’t get to all of the objects, of course. I have also been doing letter work before Hippo’s nap (or quiet time, since he often doesn’t sleep), so we might pull out some extra objects then.

I’ll write more about how we do the review as the week goes on.

Thanks for stopping by! Viel Spaß!

Hallo?? Hilfe?

Posted in Uncategorized by

Hi there! I’m super excited today! For three days in a row now, my stats on the blog have been BOOMING!! Seriously, I usually get about 10 visitors a day. Sometimes none at all. And then wham! 150 visitors?! In one day?! WOW!!

Now I just have a question. Who are you? What brought you to my blog? I’d love to know! And I’d especially love to know if you like what you see. Are you using the materials? If so, how?

And while I’m at it, I’m looking for a few ideas….

  1. I’m about to do a lesson on Eric Carle’s 1, 2, 3 ein Zug zum Zoo. Do you know it? Any ideas on working with it? I’ll post my project soon!
  2. How about some book suggestions? I’m looking for books on the topic of shapes. And also books for Nikolaus and Martinstag. But I’m really looking for simple storybooks. Not a book of pictures and words. And not the history behind the holidays. But actual stories. Simple enough that I can read them to my pre-K class of German-learners.

Finally, check it out! I’m on Instagram now. You can see the latest pictures in the sidebar! Click on the image to see more!

Herzlichen Dank! Schönen Tag noch!

O ist für Oma und Opa

Posted in Alphabet, Buchstabe: O, Uncategorized by

It just so happens that the boys’ Oma & Opa are visiting from the Netherlands! So what better way to start our O week than with these two special words!

Here’s a look at all the objects in my little O box:

20171009_194517.jpg

 

The words are:

  • das      Obst                          fruit
  • das      Ohr                            ear
  • die       Oma                          grandma
  • der      Opa                          grandfather
  •             orange                      orange (color)
  • die       Orange                     orange (fruit)
  • der      Orang-Utan               orangutan
  • das      Ornament                 ornament
  •             ost                             east
  • das      Osterei                      Easter egg
  • der      Osterhase                 Easter bunny
  • der      Otter                          otter

For the corresponding word cards see the post on Buchstabe der Woche: O.

Buchstabe der Woche: O

Posted in Alphabet, Buchstabe: O, Uncategorized by

This week we’ll be starting our work on the letter O! The words in this unit are:

  • das      Obst                          fruit
  • das      Ohr                            ear
  • die       Oma                          grandma
  • der      Opa                          grandfather
  •             orange                      orange (color)
  • die       Orange                     orange (fruit)
  • der      Orang-Utan               orangutan
  • das      Ornament                 ornament
  •             ost                             east
  • das      Osterei                      Easter egg
  • der      Osterhase                 Easter bunny
  • der      Otter                          otter

I would have liked a little more variety. There are some sets of similar words – Oma & Opa, orange & Orange, Osterei & Osterhase – but sometimes it depends on what objects I can find!

I think I will try to group them by the kind of sound that the O makes.

  1. Oma, Opa
  2. Obst, ost, Osterei, Osterhase, Otter
  3. Ohr, orange, Orange, Orang-Utan, Ornament

Here’s what the cards look like:

This are the all-caps version. You can download the cards below in all-caps or in upper and lower case letters.

I also decided to try creating a backing paper for the cards. Sometimes you can see through the cards, even when I print on cardstock. That doesn’t make for a very good game of memory or go fish! So I created these papers to be printed on the opposite side of the word cards. To be fair, I haven’t tried them myself yet! My print-outs were already laminated. But I’ll try it for sure next time and report back on how it went.

Wortschatz Karten letter backing O-page-001

There has been a lot of activity on the blog recently! But I never hear from my visitors 😦  I would love to hear how you are using the materials! And if you have other ideas, that would be great!

Viel Spaß!

Herbst mit Zahlen und Farben

Posted in Books, Coloring Pages, Numbers, Uncategorized by

In story hour yesterday, we celebrated fall with numbers and colors!

I began by using the German blocks that the library has to review numbers 1 through 10.  (You can actually get the German blocks – made by Uncle Goose – on Amazon!)

We read the following books:

  • Zehn Blätter fliegen davon by Anne Möller (2008)
  • Manuel & Didi. Das große Buch der kleinen Mäuseabenteuer (“Die Laubhütte”) by Erwin Moser (2008)
  • Manuel & Didi. Das zweite große Buch der kleinen Mäuseabenteuer (“Der Apfel”) by Erwin Moser (2009)
  • Der Herbst steht auf der Leiter by Peter Hacks (2012)

And we sang the following songs:

  • “Wind” by Nena (Himmel, Sonne, Wind und Regen)
  • “Der Apfelbaum” (Die 30 Besten Spiel- und Bewegungslieder) Click for youtube video
  • “Der Herbst steht auf der Leiter”

You can download the lyrics here: Herbstlieder

Then we did two activities:

The children were given a tree with numbers on it along with 10 foam leaves, also with numbers on each. With help from their mom or caregiver, the children matched the numbers from the stickers with those on the tree and stuck them in the appropriate place. Download the PDF activity here: zehn-blatter-arbeitsblatt-gita

I also gave children a simple Malen nach Zahlen coloring page of a maple leaf and the colors red, orange, and yellow. Download the coloring page here: malen-nach-zahlen-herbstblatt-gita

The older children only needed a little bit of help. And our younger friends enjoyed making their leaves extra colorful!