Category Archives: Uncategorized

Counting Mice

Posted in Coloring Pages, Numbers, Pre-K & K Class, Uncategorized, Word Posters by

This week in the Pre-K/Kindergarten class, we are focusing on numbers. The children have already been exposed to a few numbers. When we sing the Hello Song, I always say “eins, zwei” when they clap, or pat their legs, or especially when they stomp their feet, so that they don’t get carried away with the actions. It’s also a nice way to reinforce the first two numbers.

Today, we are adding the next three numbers. We will go over the numbers 1 through 5 using the number cards I made last year:

You can download the PDF file here: 1-5-farm-animals-gita

Then we’ll sing a song from our very first lesson this year. Now that I am going in to teach every week, I really want to bring back the songs and books throughout the year to reinforce the lessons for the children. So we’ll sing “Meine Finger, Meine Finger” from Die 30 Besten Spiel- und Bewegungslieder 3. There is no counting in the song, but we will do the different movements five times and count as we do.

I will also do a finger play called Die Mausfamilie. Again, there is no counting, but you use all 5 fingers to represent the family members. I did this finger play in class last year, and the children really enjoyed it.

 

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You can download the PDF here: die-mausfamilie-fingerspiel-w-translation

Finally, we will read the book Mein 1-2-3 Mäuschenbuch by Alexandra Dannenmann.

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This book is available from both Amazon.de and Amazon.com.

I’ll send the children home with a coloring page with 5 little mice.

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Download the PDF here: zahlen-1-5-mause-gita

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A Little More for “Martinstag”

Posted in Holidays, Pre-K & K Class, Uncategorized by

I was in the Pre-K/Kindergarten class today. I just love sharing the stories of St. Martin with the children. In a Montessori-based school where the principles of peace and respect are not only taught, but practiced on a daily basis, the kindness and generosity of the St. Martin story fit in beautifully.

This year, I had a new tool for telling the story. I ordered a set of Bildkarten (picture cards) called St. Martin feiern mit Emma und Paul – Bildkarten für unser Erzähltheater. The cards are nice and big (DIN-A3: 11.7 x 16.5 inches), and the images are simple and clear. I didn’t use all of the cards, but chose a few to talk about Martin cutting his cloak in two to share with the beggar, the children crafting lanterns and then parading at night in the town square. There are also some images to show Paul dropping his Martinsmann cookie and Emma breaking her own cookie in two to share with Paul. Very sweet!

The books I have for Martinstag have quite a bit of text. They work fine for story hour, where the children come from German-speaking families. However, I really liked the format of having large pictures to show while I explained the story, simply and in English.

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After teaching the words to “Laterne, Laterne,” the children made their paper lanterns – with some help from the two teachers and myself. We were glad to have some tape on hand, as a few of the children didn’t quite get the instruction not to cut all the way through! One of the teachers gave the useful tip that cutting the strips in the lanterns is very much like cutting fringe – a work they do regularly in the classroom.

As the children finished their lanterns, they took a seat on the rug until everyone was finished. Then we sang the song as we paraded through the classroom and out into the hall. The principal and several other staff members came out to see where the singing was coming from. She said it sounded like little angels!

If you missed the post on the lantern instructions or the vocabulary cards to help teach the song, click here to go back and take a look!

How do you help the children celebrate Martinstag? I’d love to hear!

Der gute Martin

Posted in Books, Crafty Projects, Holidays, Pre-K & K Class, Story hour, Uncategorized by

Next week marks the celebration of St. Martin’s Day. I have to admit, while I lived in Germany, I never actually witnessed the children walking through the streets with their homemade lanterns on November 11th. I didn’t know about the special day until I was teaching in the States at a German Saturday School. It’s such a sweet celebration, though! Now I love to share it with the children at Story Hour and in Preschool.

To go along with the celebration, I have created a very simple lantern for the children to make. You can print it out, let them color the paper if they like, and then cut along the dotted lines and assemble it. You can download the template and instructions in PDF format here: martinstag-laterne

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A finished lantern from Story Hour

The songs that go with Martinstag are also very important. We always sing two of the most popular ones at Story Hour: “Laterne, Laterne” and “Ich geh’ mit meiner Laterne.” When I teach Preschool, I often just do the first two lines of “Laterne, Laterne,” since it is easy to learn and helps the children learn some of the more important vocabulary words: Laterne, Sonne, Mond, and Sterne. To teach the songs, I made up some vocabulary posters of these four words, a coloring page, and a sheet with the lyrics. You can download all of them in PDF format here:

 

Here’s an idea of what they look like:

When I teach Martinstag at Story Hour, I include several books. I have a few about Martinstag itself. This year, we’ll be reading Laterne, Laterne, da oben leuchten die Sterne by Dagmar Geisler and Rosemarie Künzler-Behncke (Ravensburger, 2009). I also like to read the fairy tale “Sterntaler” about the little girl who gives away all her earthly possessions to others in need and is rewarded in the end with a shower of coins that fall from the stars to last her the rest of her life. (I actually made my own book of this fairy tale, so I don’t have one to recommend here.) This year, I’m adding a beautiful new book (well, new to me!) called Der rote Faden by Anne-Gaëlle Balpe and illustrated by Eve Tharlet (Minedition, 2014). In this story, little Oli finds a red thread and by passing it on, he learns how little it takes to help others.

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Halloween & die kleine Hexe

Posted in Coloring Pages, Holidays, Pre-K & K Class, Uncategorized by

When I teach German at preschool around Halloween, I like to do a lesson on colors to go with the song, “Ich bin die kleine Hexe”. First we review a few colors. Then we sing the song to practice the colors. At this point in the year, we’re starting with the basics: just the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue.

I created a full-sized poster of a pair of shoes and printed them on red, yellow, and blue paper to use as a cue when we sing the song.

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There is also a coloring page with three sets of shoes, one for each color. The lyrics are on the sheet as well, so the children can bring them home with them. I often hear from parents about how the children sing the songs I teach them, but they don’t know the songs! So I hope this helps them out.

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You can download them each here as PDF:

You can also find the sheet music here at Labbe.

Happy Halloween!

Montags mit Mama: Pumpkins!

Posted in Crafty Projects, Holidays, Uncategorized by

It’s that time of year! The leaves are turning fiery colors. The air is getting crisp. And it’s time to visit the pumpkin patch! We started the tradition 3 years ago. Our local patch is only about 10 minutes from our house. We can go on a hay ride or pull a Radio Flyer wagon out to the pumpkins. The boys always enjoy being pulled out to the pumpkin patch in the wagon.

We got some small pumpkins this year in addition to the bigger ones we would carve. So Hippo and I got out the paints and started decorating. We used circle-shaped sponge brushes in different sizes to start applying paint. Perfect opportunity to talk about shapes! Hippo started out by making a pattern. I was so impressed! But then he just couldn’t stop himself. So it turned into a lovely blue-green pumpkin. That’s okay, though. It’s the boys’ favorite color!

So our little activity allowed us to talk about fall, pumpkins, shapes, and colors.

Der Herbst ist da!

Posted in Book Materials, Numbers, Story hour, Uncategorized by

With Columbus Day coming up, we were going to miss our first October meeting of Story Hour. So we snuck in an extra session on the last Friday of September. Perfect timing, since fall has just begun!

We started out by reviewing numbers. I just grabbed the blocks from the play area to go over numbers 1-10. For the first book (Zehn Blätter fliegen davon), I had put sticky notes on each page to count the leaves that had flown from the tree. That way, the children had the chance to review the numbers again. At the end of the story hour, we did two activities to practice numbers.

Books:

  • Zehn Blätter fliegen davon by Anne Möller (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)

Songs:

  • “Bunt sind schon die Wälder” (Here, you can find lyrics and music.)
  • “Der Apfelbaum” (Die 30 Besten Spiel- und Bewegungslieder) Click for youtube video
  • “Der Herbst steht auf der Leiter”

All of these songs are available to download through Amazon.de!

Activities:

1. Klebe das Blatt mit der passenden Zahl an den Baum. In addition to the handout, I used foam leaf stickers. I wrote a number on each one (1 – 10), and the children had to match the leaf sticker to the number on the tree. Download the PDF here: zehn-blatter-arbeitsblatt-gita

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2. Malen nach Zahlen Download the PDF here: malen-nach-zahlen-herbstblatt-gita

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Montags mit Mama: Color Mixing

Posted in Crafty Projects, Uncategorized by

Hippo has been so interested in colors lately, so I thought we would do some coloring mixing this morning.

Last night, I prepared the “experiment”. I filled an ice cube tray with water and then added food coloring in red, yellow, and blue. A few drops in each cube was enough to make our three colors.

This morning, we set up our table with the tablecloth, a plate, a fork*, and the colored cubes. I also drew up a quick sheet to see what Hippo thought would happen when we mixed the colors. He was pretty off! But that’s part of the fun 🙂

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First he guessed what each mixture of colors would make. Then we put one cube of each color on the plate and let him play with them. As they melted, the two primary colors combined to make the new secondary color. Magic! Then we filled in the Ergebnis circle with the correct answer. In the end, he mixed ALL of the colors together. You can imagine what happened then … a nice, muddy mess of colors 🙂

*He started out using his fingers to move the colored ice cubes around. Of course, his fingers turned red and yellow and blue, too! So we got out a fork for mixing the color cubes instead.

Here’s a blank form you can download in PDF: farben-mischen-gita. It looks like this:

farben-mischen-gita-page-001

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Alles über mich!

Posted in Story hour, Uncategorized by

For our first session of Lesestunde (Story Hour), I like to do a topic that is all about “ME!” So we read books and sing songs about the body and feelings. For the end of the session, I prepared a few variations of activities, so the children could also report on themselves.

Download the PDF file here: das-lied-uber-mich

Here are the books we read:

  • Heute bin ich by Mies van Hout (2015)
  • Das bin ich by Heinz Janisch & Birgit Antoni (2014)
  • Von Kopf bis Fuß by Eric Carle (2011)

And here are the songs we sang:

  • “Wenn du glücklich bist”
  • “Meine Finger, Meine Finger” (Die 30 Besten Spiel- und Bewegungslieder, Vol. 3)
  • “Kopf und Schulter, Knie und Fuß”
  • “Das Lied über mich” (Volker Rosin)

You can download all the lyrics here: lieder-16-sept-2016 (PDF)

Morning Routine

Posted in Getting them to read more, Uncategorized by

Now that Hippo is going to school, I thought he could use an aid in helping him get ready in the morning. So I created a visual checklist for him and also included instructions in German. As he starts learning to read, those words will become more helpful!

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The routine includes the following four steps:

  • Zieh dich an (get dressed)
  • Wirf deinen Schlafanzug in den Wäschekorb (put your pajamas in the laundry basket)
  • Mach dein Bett (make your bed)
  • Putz dir die Zähne (brush your teeth)

You can download the PDF document here: morning-routine-2016

Montags mit Mama: Name Train

Posted in Crafty Projects, Uncategorized by

Our little Hippo started school last week! He is 3-and-a-half years old and will be going 3 half days (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday). I’m so happy – and relieved! – to say that his first week was a huge success! Froggy started 1st grade, and it was an easy transition. This morning, he informed Hippo that he wouldn’t go to school today, and Hippo completely slumped in his chair. Half of me wanted to hug him, since he was so sad, and the other half wanted to jump for joy that he likes school so much! 🙂

My goal is to do a project with Hippo on Monday mornings, since he isn’t in school. It’s a great way to spend some “quality”time together. When Froggy was 3, we used to do projects almost every day – crafts, art, science experiments, all kinds of fun things! And of course, I want to use it as an opportunity for a German lesson!

Today we borrowed an idea from Tippytoe Crafts: Name Trains! Here’s what we needed:

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  • print-out of a locomotive and some tracks
  • colorful squares of paper
  • letter stencils
  • scissors
  • glue stick
  • crayons
  • black paper
  • small circle punch
  • large piece of paper (or a couple of sheets taped together)

I could have had Hippo just draw train tracks, but he hasn’t been into drawing or coloring lately. In fact, his locomotive remains black and white!

First, we glued the tracks down. Then the locomotive. Next, we started sounding out his name. I think he knows his letters well enough. But I was surprised that he could figure out which ones we needed next. Each letter “car”was glued on to the train. Then he glued on the wheels. He could have colored the letters and decorated the paper, but like I said, he’s just not into it right now.

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After we finished the train, we practiced some color recognition. We even included braun and grau from the tracks!

While we worked, I played some German train songs, too.

  • “Die Eisenbahn, Die Eisenbahn” by Stephen Janetzko
  • “Mit der Eisenbahn” by Ottmar Liedl
  • “Der Schaffner hebt den Stab” by Lamp Leute (Die 30 besten Spiel- und Bewegungslieder, Vol. 2)
  • “Das Tschuu-Tschuu-Eisenbahn-Lied” by Hartmut Höfele
  • “Der Zug ist Weg” by Stephen Janetzko

The clipart for the locomotive was created by Charlotte’s Clips, and the tracks were created by Hidesy’s Clipart.