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”.
For this week’s remote lesson for my preschoolers & kindergartners, I wanted to review the weather. We had been working on it for several weeks before school closed. After our Hello song, we would review the words and record the weather in our chart.
Today I made a video to review the words:
You can download the weather vocabulary posters I use in the video here: Wetter Wortschatz Posters GitA
I created a weekly chart for recording the weather. It looks like this:
I also made a page of cards in color or black & white. They can be used as a whole sheet to review the words. Or they can be cut up into flashcards. If you print two sets, you can use them to play Memo!
All three of these pages are included in this Wetterbericht (weather report) PDF: Wetterbericht Woche GitA
When I first talk to my young students about the weather, I ask them: “Was für Wetter haben wir heute?” (What kind of weather do we have today?) This question prompts them to answer with the noun form: Sonne – Wind – Regen (sun, wind, rain, etc.). It keeps things simple at first.
Later we can get into the question: “Wie ist das Wetter heute?” (How is the weather today?). Those answers can vary: “Die Sonne scheint.” – “Es ist winding.” – “Es regnet.” (The sun is shining. – It is windy. – It’s raining.)
If you want to practice writing some of the words, I made some worksheets a couple of years ago that work nicely with these materials. Click on over to this post about weather to find those!
We’re doing a little review today in pre-K/kindergarten. It’s hard to believe it’s almost the end of the year! The children have learned so much! And I’m so inspired to do even more with them next year!!
One of the things we will review today is the weather. We’ll look out the window to see what the weather is like and what we see: die Sonne, der Wind, die Wolke. It’s a beautiful day today 🙂
And we’ll read Elmar mag jedes Wetter again.
I prepared a coloring page for them as well. There are two versions. In the first version, the children can trace the weather words under the pictures. In the second version, I’ve given them a bit of a challenge. There is a word bank (Wortschatz), and they will have to choose the appropriate word to write under the image. I have plenty of each, so the children can choose what they would like to do.
You can download the PDF version here for FREE: Wetter Malvorlage GitA
Check out these other weather materials to go along with Elmar! And for other weather work, just click on the “weather” tag at the right!
I was back in the 1st/2nd grade today! So it was time to tell another story. I selected one of my favorite read-aloud children’s books: Klingelingeling by Nicola Smee (arsEdition, 2010; original English title: Jingle-Jingle).
Of course, I didn’t actually read the book. I told it as a story, which meant I had to add some description. Since the book is copyrighted, I can’t post my version of it here. But it wasn’t too hard to work out!
For today’s lesson, I wanted to add a brief discussion about the weather. So after our hello song, I asked the children about the weather for today. I told them the words in German and wrote them on the board: es regnet, regnerisch, warm, leichter Wind. I’d like to start each lesson with the weather in the future.
From there, we went right into our story. I was really pleased with how it went! It’s such a fun little story, especially when the horse climbs into the sleigh, so he can ride down the hill with the other animals! I did have to figure out how to draw all those animals, though! I used a book called The Usborne Step-By-Step Drawing Book (Usborne, 2014):
(They didn’t have a duck, so I looked up some ideas online.) When I drew the horse, I warned the children not to laugh at my drawings. They actually clapped! They could all tell it was a horse. Success! Here is a look at my finished story board:
When I finished the story, they asked where it was from. So I told them about the book. I happened to have it with me, so I showed it to them. Most of them wanted to hear it, so I read it aloud to them. I think it was actually a great way to reinforce the story and repeat the vocabulary!
I made up some worksheets for them to practice the main words: die Katze, der Hund, das Schwein, die Ente, das Pferd, der Schlitten. I thought about Schnee, too but decided to keep it to 6 words (I like even numbers!). The tasks included:
They did great with the first pages. Some of them had trouble with putting the images in order. It helped if they started with the last one first, since it’s obvious (they flew out of the sled when they reached the bottom of the hill). I did not expect them to be able to read the text under the pictures, but it’s there for exposure.
You can download the worksheets as a PDF file here: Klingelingeling Arbeitsblätter, 2018 GitA
Before I sent them off to work on the assignment, though, I had one more bit of fun with them. I decided to try a tongue twister! I do love a good tongue twister! I was surprised to find that I had to explain what it was for some of the children. But then I also got to show off my “Peter Piper” 😉
For our German tongue twister – or Zungenbrecher (literally: tongue breaker), I chose:
In Ulm und um Ulm und um Ulm herum
I started by teaching them how to pronounce Ulm. Oooooooo. Then add the L, then the M. Then make it short. Then we started very slowly. And we worked up our speed. Some of them got quite good at it!
After they completed their worksheets, I had one more surprise for them. They had been begging me to read an Elephant & Piggie book by Mo Willems. A few of them have been translated into German, and I just happen to have one: Das Buch über uns (Klett Kinderbuch, 2015; original English title We are in a Book).
For the most part, they really enjoyed it. And some of them knew it well enough in English to translate as we went along. That was fine. It was the end of a very long lesson (I ended up being in the class for an hour and a half!) at the end of a Friday half-day. So it would have been a lot to expect them to sit still and just listen!
Overall, I’d say it was a very successful lesson! I was exhausted, but then I usually am! And it’s so worth it! Even Froggy said he enjoys the lessons, even though he isn’t really learning anything new 🙂
Froggy is still into weather, so we’re continuing with the topic. I have to admit, I haven’t gotten to work on my own materials much lately. So I’m still relying on some great resources I’ve found online.
I do have a couple of ideas up my sleeve, though! I found some fun books related to Weather and want to create some worksheets to go with them.
We also had an idea for a super fun project! We’re going to do a weather comparison for some familiar places. Well, sort of familiar. We’ll be comparing our own weather in Philadelphia with Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (where our 3 au pairs are from!) along with the Netherlands (where PER is from, and where Oma & Opa still live). More on that soon….
For now, here is what we’ve been up to this week:
Today for our weather unit lesson, Froggy read a book called Elmar mag jedes Wetter. It’s a pretty simple book. But at this stage, simple is good!
At the same time, it wasn’t quite enough to fill out a full lesson. So I created a worksheet to go with it. It, too, is rather simple. Since Elmar likes all weather, the answer to each question is Ja! But I added a bit more to personalize it:
It also sneaks in a little work on how to say that you like something!
You can download the PDF here: Elmar mag jedes Wetter – GitA
Our weather unit continues this week! I used a lot of printable worksheets from iSL Collective this week. They were nice and easy. I’ve included links to the pages here. I hope they work! I don’t think you need a membership to view them. (It’s free to join!)
*I receive no compensation for referencing the resources here. I link them merely for your convenience – and mine!
I try to keep the after-school lessons with Froggy short and sweet. Especially when he has an activity after school, he’s pretty tired when he gets home. I know if the lesson lasts longer than 5 or 10 minutes, I’m going to lose him … fast!
In my last post, I wrote about the great resource created by Open Wide the World that I purchases from her Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) page. I’m starting with these resources to work with Froggy on our weather unit.
In addition, I have downloaded a number of worksheets from iSL Collective (see more about them on my resources page). The only problem with mixing resources is of course that they don’t cover the exact same vocabulary. However, I look at this as an opportunity to expand Froggy’s vocab, as it adds just one or two new words or phrases at a time.
Finally, we’ll end this short week (Monday was a holiday for us) with a game I also purchased from TPT: a weather domino game. ($3) I printed the 5 pages on card stock and laminated them before cutting the domino pieces with a paper cutter.
Here are the lessons we are doing each day:
Domino chain
*I receive no compensation for referencing the resources here. I link them merely for your convenience – and mine!
We’ve taken a break from our reading lessons in German with Froggy, but now that the holidays are behind us, we’re ready to dive back in. I decided to start by asking him if there was a topic he was interested in learning more about. “Space!” he replied, of course. Well, we’ve done an awful lot with that already. So I suggested weather, since he seems to have a strong interest in that topic. His teachers at school talk about the weather and the forecast every day at school. So he readily agreed.
I looked through my files to see what I have on the subject, and happily found a rather nice unit already prepared! It was created by Open Wide the World, and you can get it on the Teachers Pay Teachers site for $6. Click here for a link to the unit.
German Weather Unit preview by Open Wide the World
Here’s what you get:
For our first lesson, I’m going to start by introducing the weather sentence using the poster display page (printed on letter-sized paper). Then we’ll do the matching worksheet.
German in the Afternoon Activities 