Tag Archives: New Year’s

SL: Silvester und das Jahrkind – a fairy tale for the New Year

Posted in 1st - 4th Grade, Story Listening, Uncategorized by

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A few years ago I stumbled on to an English version of this New Year’s fairy tale by Eduard Mörike.

The story is not included in Mörike’s collected works. He apparently made up the story around 1860 for a little girl named Emilie Schnabel, who was about age 6 or 7. The story made such an impression on the little girl that she later wrote it down when she was an adult. It made its way to Mörike’s family, and that’s how we have it now. The text has been studied by experts, and they agree it matches Mörike’s style.

It is such a beautiful story to tell at the beginning of the new year! I knew that I wanted to tell it as a Story Listening lesson.

It was a little challenging for the 3rd graders, but the 4th graders really got it.

Lucky Pig! (Glücksschwein)

Posted in Books, Recipes, Uncategorized by

Happy New Year! As I mentioned in my last post, it is traditional to have a pig made of bread or marzipan to celebrate New Year’s in Germany.

In addition to our pancake pigs, we also got creative with the bread version of the lucky pig. One of my boys’ favorite snacks is bread with Nutella. So why not have pig-shaped bread with Nutella?! All you need is a pig cookie cutter. Ours was quite large, so it just barely fit on the bread. I added a little candy eye that we had from decorating cupcakes.

Just makes me want to say, “Happy Pig Day!” (But maybe we’ve been reading too many of Mo Willem’s Elephant and Piggie books! I just found two of these books in German: Das Buch über Uns and Du hast einen Vogel auf dem Kopf. I ordered the first one through Book Depository, so we’ll see how it is in German!)

Happy New Year! Einen guten Rutsch!

Posted in Holidays, Uncategorized by

It’s the last day of 2016! How do you celebrate New Year’s? One of the ways to ring in the New Year in Germany is with a Glücksschwein – a lucky pig! It can be made of marzipan or bread. But I’m not skilled enough for either of those 🙂  So in our house, we make pig pancakes!

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I ordered the Pig Breakfast Shaper – a silicone pig mold – on Amazon for about $6. Make sure your pancake batter is runny enough to fill out the mold. Then wait until it really sets on the bottom and lift off the mold. Then flip the pancake. Ta-dah! A pig pancake for New Year’s!

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