Tag Archives: Writing exercise

Was für Wetter haben wir heute?

Posted in Pre-K & K Class, Uncategorized, Videos, Word Posters, Writing by

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:

Wetterbericht Woche PKK 2020 GitA-page-001

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!

Reisetagebuch – Daily Journal for Kids

Posted in Travel, Uncategorized, Writing by

Last year for our long stay in the Netherlands, I created a travel journal for Froggy. I had maps to show where we’d be traveling, a place to collect post cards or other memories, a sheet for addresses, etc. Most of that, I have to admit, we did not use!

But I am happy to say that we were pretty good about filling in our daily travel journal. Okay, oftentimes, it took a lot of prompting by me. And I ended up doing a lot of the writing. But he was only 7, and he was pretty tired by the end of the day!

I asked Froggy if he wanted to do it again this year, and he said yes! So I printed out just the daily journal part – one copy for each day we’ll be away. He loves to check out the weather, so I imagine he will at least be diligent about recording that! Hopefully, now that he is more comfortable with writing, he will fill in the whole thing by himself. Time will tell….

Tagebuch 2017 GitA

The page includes a place to record the general weather plus high and low temperatures. Then there is a kind of heading to record the main destination for the day. He can record how he felt and what he saw, and then describe the best part of the day. Of course, he has to record what he ate! And then a little extra space for something else – what surprised him, what was funny, what he liked or didn’t like? Oh, and of course, it’s all in German!

You can download the PDF for FREE here: Tagebuch GitA

Gute Reise!

Das Wetter – The Weather

Posted in Book Materials, Books, Coloring Pages, Pre-K & K Class, Uncategorized, Writing by

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.

elmar-mag-jedes-wetter

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!

Buchstaben: AU

Posted in Alphabet, Buchstabe: AU, Uncategorized, Writing by

I’m not sure how I feel about doing a vowel blend for the next letter. But that’s what comes next in my books: Mein ABC Übungsheft. So we’ll run with it!

There are two types of objects for this letter combo: words that begin with AU and words that have the AU in the middle.

  • die Aubergine – eggplant
  • das Auge – eye
  • der Ausstecher – cookie cutter
  • das Auto – car
  • der Bauer – farmer
  • der Baum – tree
  • der Dinosaurier – dinosaur
  • die Maus – mouse
  • das Raumschiff – spaceship
  • die Sau – sow (pig)

I made up cards with both all caps and upper & lower case letters. Here’s what they look like:

Download the PDFs here:

I came up with some new worksheets to go along with the unit. I was trying to find some things that both Hippo and Froggy could do. So the worksheets go in order from easier to harder. A little one will probably still need help, even if it’s just reading the directions! Here are some ideas of the worksheets:

There are even two word searches, one easy and one hard! Solutions to both word searches are also included 😉

Download the PDF here: Arbeitsblätter AU – GitA

Let me know how they work out for you!

Viel Spaß!

Buchstabe: B – Sätze schreiben

Posted in Alphabet, Buchstabe: B, Uncategorized, Writing by

Every day, I try to put a note in Froggy’s lunchbox … in German, of course 😉 Sometimes I just write something about his day. But now I’m also working in some of our letter work!

For the letter B, I came up with this crazy sentence:

Der Bauer isst eine Birne und eine Banane im Bus auf dem Weg zum Bären im Baum!

I made up some worksheets based on that sentence to have some more fun with the words.

There is the sentence with images, just the sentence, just images (to cut out and paste onto the sentence page), and just images to write your own crazy sentence!

You can download it for FREE here: B-Satz-GitA

Viel Spaß!

Reisetagebuch – Travel Journal

Posted in Travel, Uncategorized by

We’re gearing up for our next summer trip. This is the big one! We’re going to the Netherlands and Germany for a whole month!!

I never even completely unpacked from our trip to Oregon! Well, of course, we pulled out the packing cubes and did all the laundry! But the suitcases are still in the family room. (That’s another good things about the packing cubes: we don’t have to pack the suitcases upstairs and then lug them all the way downstairs!)

Now, when I get ready for a trip, I don’t just make packing lists of clothes and toiletries. Part of having great travelers is great preparation and having a diversity of activities to keep the boys occupied (more on that later). I also like to plan a little for while we are away.

For this trip, I wanted to create a travel journal. There are a number of components to it that I’m working on (thank you, Pinterest, for the inspiration!). But I wanted to share the most important part right away: the daily journal! I love the way it came out! I kept it black-and-white, since we’ll need about 30 copies of it (one for each day we’re away). It’s really meant for Froggy (age 7), but I think I’ll try it with Hippo (age 4), too. There is a place to record the weather (including high and low temperatures), how he felt, what we did, what we saw, the best part of the day, what he ate, and something extra.

Tagebuch 2017 GitA

I left a margin on the left, so you can punch holes and put it in a folder or binder. I can’t wait to see how it works out! I hope Froggy is as excited about it as I am 🙂 I’m curious to see how much he can do in German. And how much writing he’ll be able to do. Well, really, I’m hoping we really do it every day!! Daumen drücken!

Here is where you can download the PDF: Tagebuch 2017 GitA

Let me know how it goes for you!

Gute Reise!

Weather Plan: Week 3

Posted in Language Themes, Uncategorized, Writing by

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:

  • Day 1:
    • A quick weather worksheet that also provided an opportunity to talk about dates (Datum) and seasons. The season part was easy enough, but we had to talk about the words Datum and Monat. Nonetheless, he zipped through it quickly, which was perfect for a tired Monday afternoon. The worksheet was a page from an entire German online workbook from Lehrmittelperlen. I think we’ll be using the rest of it for other topics, too! (Lehrmittelperlen is a site full of German teaching resources that costs about €20 per year.)

2017-01-30-17-18-50

  • Day 2
    • Today we read a simple book: Elmar mag jedes Wetter by David McKee (translated from English; Thienemann, 2016). I made up a worksheet to go with it. See my post for the details and download!
  • Day 3-5
    • Time to start a weather project! We are going to record the weather in our town (Philadelphia), Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. I’m working on a document for our recordings. I’ll post it as soon as it’s been tested and ready to go! The plan is to record the weather for a month and then graph our findings. We’ll see how it goes! I’d be happy with a week, I suppose!

Sorting Shapes

Posted in Uncategorized, Writing by

Froggy has always loved shapes. And sorting. And sorting shapes. Now that he is 7, he has added another interest: writing in cursive. He’s trying to teach himself, since they are not yet teaching cursive at school.

I love it when he takes the initiative to start a project. Especially when that project is in German!

The other night, when I was putting him to bed, he asked if we could work a little more on his latest project. He had grabbed a book off the shelf: Duden’s Kennst du das? Die Formen (2009).

kennst-du-das-formen

He was making a list of the shapes to sort them (and color-coding them, too, of course!).

2017-01-22-19-47-32

Some of the words are in cursive, some not. Some are not even spelled correctly. Some he wrote, some I wrote. But it’s all good! I was just tickled pink that he was doing something in German by his own choice!

Weather Plan: Week 2

Posted in Games, Language Themes, Uncategorized, Writing by

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!)

  • Day 1:
    • Wetterkarte: “Wie ist das Wetter?” (iSL Collective) – This is a weather map of Europe, and you have to tell what the weather is in 8 cities. Only thing is, the weather is mostly the same! I ended up doing the writing, so the focus was on speaking and vocab (saying the phrases he had been learning).
  • Day 2:
    • Partnerarbeit: “Wetter in Deutschland Wechselspiel” (iSL Collective) – This activity is for two people. Each gets a map of Germany with the 16 capitols of the Bundesländer. But each gets the weather information for only 8 of those cities. Each also gets a chart to fill in with the 8 city names. There was a small error in that Düsseldorf was listed twice, while Bremen had been left off. Since it is a Word document, you could go in and correct it before printing. I just didn’t notice it in time. We also had a small mistake on my part! I thought the picture for Dresden was windy, but then I realized it was foggy! So we switched them. Focus here was on vocab, speaking, and writing. Here’s a glimpse at Froggy’s work:

2017-01-24-17-10-21

2017-01-26-16-36-15

  • Day 4:
    • Matching: Today we did another page from the set “Wie ist das Wetter?” (see above on Day 1). It’s a matching exercise of phrases. For example, “Die Sonne scheint” and “Es ist sonnig.” There is also a small exercise about seasons, where each season is described, and the student writes in the name of the season. Focus on reading and vocab, and also a pre-exercise of circumlocution (the ability to rephrase a word or idea in another way). He added a step by starring the weather that fit today.
  • Day 5:
    • Spieltag! We ended our week with a board game from iSL. All four of us played while enjoying a snack: Froggy, Hippo (although, he wanted to keep landing on the snow!), AP3, and myself. On a long Friday at the end of a long week, playing a game is definitely the way to go. I don’t see how I could have gotten Froggy to do a worksheet or some such. But a game – now that’s fun! It went quickly enough, but we still worked it in. For this board game, I just punched out a few different shapes to be our game pieces and grabbed a die. You roll the die, move forward, and complete the sentence according to the picture. Some of the spaces have arrows that either propel you forward or bring you back. My only complaint was that not every space has something on it – I landed on two of them during the game! Otherwise, we all enjoyed it!

2017-01-27-17-11-57

*I receive no compensation for referencing the resources here. I link them merely for your convenience – and mine!

Weather Plan: Week 1

Posted in Language Themes, Reading Lessons, Uncategorized, Writing by

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:

  • Day 1:
    • Introduce the weather sentence using the poster display page (printed on letter-sized paper) (This isn’t our first time talking about weather, so he’s pretty familiar with the phrases already.)
    • Do the matching worksheet (on p. 25)
  • Day 2:
    • Review weather sentences.
    • Do the fill-in + wordsearch worksheet (on p. 29)
  • Day 3:
  • Day 4:
    • I like to end the week with something fun, like a game. So we played weather dominoes. (See the link above for the resource to purchase.)
wp-1484946621554.jpg

Domino chain


*I receive no compensation for referencing the resources here. I link them merely for your convenience – and mine!

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