Tag Archives: Workbooks

Materials for Summer Learning

Posted in Books, Resources, Uncategorized by

With the summer break upon us, I know some of my students are interested in continuing their learning of German during the break. I have found some materials, such as workbooks, books, and CDs, that can be ordered in the US.

Workbooks

For young learners, there is the Dover Little Activity Book (it is only 4 x 5.6 inches!): Color & Learn Easy German Phrases for Kids (Dover, 2015). This pocket-sized book is a picture dictionary with German, English translation, and pronunciation. And it doubles as a coloring book. There are lots of useful phrases plus the basics, such as colors, numbers, days, months, etc. It is available on Amazon.com for about $2.50.

Color Learn Easey German Dover

For young learners and beginners, there is the Cool Kids Speak German series (CreateSpace). These workbooks use both English and German to guide students through the exercises, such as worksheets, word searches, and coloring pages. Each workbook includes a German-English dictionary plus the answer key at the back. The series includes the following titles:

  • Young Cool Kids Learn German (Numbers, Teddy Bear’s Picnic, greetings and useful words, colors, farm animals, the garden, toys, and ice cream)
  • Cool Kids Speak German Book 1 (greetings, introductions, numbers 1-10, fruit, colors, clothes, and transportation)
  • Cool Kids Speak German Book 2 (pet animals, numbers 11-20, sports, weather, drinks, and the house)
  • Cool Kids Speak German Book 3 (things for school, numbers 21-40, months, family, food, and school subjects)

Although I have only seen Book 1 in person, the series seems simple and instructive. They are available on Amazon.com for about $8 – 9.

For older students, I found a book of word searches called Learn German with Word Search Puzzles (CreateSpace, 2018).The word searches are difficult, in that the words can go diagonally and backwards. So they are not ideal for younger learners. Each puzzle has a topic and includes words in German and their English translation (both of which can be found in the puzzle). There is an answer key in the back. It seems it would be a fun way to practice some vocabulary. It is available on Amazon.com for about $10.

Learn German with Word Search Puzzles

Other Books

You might also consider getting a favorite book in German. There are many titles available in translation. My favorite place to order books is Book Depository (BookDepository.com). They are based in the UK and ship for FREE, even internationally! They have a great selection of German books at competitive prices. Try searching an author and then filter by language (in the left column) to see what is available in German. For example, if you search Eric Carle, there are 214 titles in German!! Here is a link to Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) board book.

Audio Books & Music

Another great way to learn is to listen to favorite stories (especially if you have the book in German, too). Continuing with the Eric Carle example, you can get a CD of Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt from Book Depository for about $10. (Just be careful not to get one in dialect!!) It comes with other stories in German, such as The Very Quiet Cricket, The Very Lonely Firefly, & The Very Busy Spider.

Board Book
CD

If you don’t want to purchase a CD, you could try YouTube. You would need the German title of the book you want to hear. But many can be found being read aloud. You can even hear Eric Carle read Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt in German (did you know he was originally from Germany?!). You can also watch a lovely video of the story on YouTube.

How about some German songs? Remember Nena?! Well, I don’t just mean “99 Luftballons” 🙂  She has several lovely CDs of children’s songs now. Try searching “Nena Kinderlieder” in your favorite music app. (Kinderlieder means children’s songs.) While many recordings of children’s music can be somewhat … well, difficult to listen to, I find her recordings to be quite lovely. There is also the series Die 30 besten Spiel- und Bewegunslieder (The 30 best play and movement songs) by Simone Sommerland & Karsten Glück. You can find the songs on YouTube as well.

index

These ideas can get you started! If you have any questions or suggestions, just comment below!

Viel Spaß in den Sommerferien!

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!

Sticker Workbooks

Posted in Resources, Uncategorized by

As much as I enjoy creating fun activities and worksheets for my kids in German, sometimes I just don’t have the time. For a while, Froggy was really into sticker books, and so I sought out some fun sticker workbooks to purchase online. They were hard to find at first, because I didn’t know the titles of the series. So I thought I would compile a list of some of the ones we’ve liked – both for myself for future reference, and for anyone else out there looking for some fun supporting materials. You can search just the general series title, or add a specific topic, such as Tiere, Weltraum, Feuerwehr, etc.

  • Was ist Was Mitmachheft (Tessloff Verlag)
    • also available in Junior for younger children and Mini for on-the-go
  • Rätseln und Stickern – Was ist Was Rästselhefte (Tessloff Verlag)
  • Lesen, Lernen, Mitmachen! (Parragon)
  • memo Activity (Dorling Kindersley)
  • Der große Stickerspaß (Usborne)
  • Superstarker Stickerspaß (Arena)
  • Spiel & Spaß Stickerspaß (Ravensburger)

I’ll say this: we haven’t tried all of these series. And perhaps there are more out there, too! I’ll update the post if I find anything. I think we’ve tried the first 5 and been happy with them.

German Date #4: More Space!

Posted in Resources, Uncategorized by

Froggy has been enjoying our German dates so much, he wanted to do more! So we decided that he would go on another date this week with AP2. Of course, he wanted to keep talking about space. I just happened to have ordered some space workbooks in German, and they arrived Thursday afternoon. He’s really into sticker workbooks right now, so he was VERY excited 🙂

He worked through 4 or 5 pages of the book. Hippo and I happened to crash their date at the last minute, so I got to see some of it in action 🙂  AP2 was doing a lot of the reading, but then we got Froggy to read out loud, too. The workbook provided some good challenge with a number of words that he didn’t know.

The workbook we used is called Mitmach-Heft Weltraum (Was ist was Junior) (Tessloff, 2016). I bought it on Amazon.de for about €5.