Mein Exemplar von Eine Woche voller Samstage fällt schon auseinander. Wie auf der ersten Seite zu lesen ist, war es ein Geschenk zu meinem 8. Geburtstag, und das ist nun schon eine ganze Weile her. Meiner Tochter habe ich das Buch zum ersten Mal vorgelesen, als sie gerade sieben war, bevor ich wusste, dass sie […]

Letzten Sonntag hat meine Tochter mich zu einer Theatervorstellung eingeladen. Mich erwartete ein Puppentheater mit der Geschichte “Conni geht zum Zahnarzt”: Autorin: Liane Schneider Illustratorin: Eva Wenzel-Bürger Verlag: Carlsen ISBN: 978-3551085566

On Saturday, we were coming back from one of the numerous birthday parties to which my daughter has been invited this year. It had started to rain, and we were waiting for our tram, commenting on the weather, and my daughter concluded with: Schietwedder!”, which is plattdüütsch (my grandma’s mother tongue, a regional language I […]

For her 6th birthday party (advanced due to the early start of the school holidays), my daughter invited six classmates – representing a stunning seven nationalities. I was prepared for that, witness the cake: What I was not prepared for was the guests singing Happy Birthday in not two,  not three, but four languages, thanks […]

Three years ago, almost to the day, I shared a video of my daughter making a speech on the steps of the high school near our house. For some reason, every time we came home from the park, she’d stop there, go up the steps, and hold a speech. That day, I had the camera […]

Today, we were on the Métro 7 on our way to school, when my daughter asked at which station we were. I told her, and we looked at the métro map, and I read the names of all the stations we had passed or would pass. One of them is called Place Monge. Her: “Das […]

I never lose an occasion to try and work on basic German vocabulary – which at age 5½ includes a lot of numbers, days of the week, months of the year, you get the idea. So the other day, when my daughter rightly declared: “Morgen ist Freitag!” (Tomorrow is Friday), I prompted: “Und heute?” (And […]

A month ago, our 5-year-old daughter started her final preschool year at a new school, one with a program for native speakers of German. She has one hour of German class each day, and the other week she came home with this cute rhyme:

Summer holidays are full of fun and an occasion to try out new things. When on the third day in our German holiday resort, the kids in the surrounding holiday homes were outside playing after supper, our 5-year-old decided she wanted to join them on skates. (She’d only skated once so far.) So that’s what […]

If you have read my guest post Bilingual Travelers: Sweet Exposure to Language and Culture in Germany over at Bilingual Monkeys about last year’s summer holiday, you will have noticed the minority language gets a boost with food. This year is no different. On our first day in the holiday resort, I’d forgotten to give […]