As I said in my last post, I’m always looking for ways to put German in front of Froggy, so his reading skills don’t fall too far behind his English reading.
Another trick I use daily is to write a note for his lunchbox in German. I always put the date at the top. Ideally, I would have some topic that we’re working on (but I haven’t done that in a while), and the notes would use vocabulary from that same topic. Mostly, my notes have something to do with what is going on at school, the weather, or something he might be looking forward to. Here are a couple of examples:
- “Mittwoch, der 10. Februar – Lieber Froggy, wir sehen Schnee weit und breit! Bis bald! – Deine, Mama”
- “Mittwoch, der 17. Februar – Lieber Froggy, spielst du heite draußen? Viel Spaß! – Deine, Mama”
His teachers say the notes have been working great this year. He not only reads them but often shares them with his friends. A couple of months ago, the school counselor had a number of special lunches with the kindergartners to talk about friendship, and she also said that Froggy would read and translate the notes for the group 🙂 At least for now, German is cool enough to share with friends!
German in the Afternoon Activities 