Now in grade 2, every week my daughter gets a few new sight words to learn in her minority language. When she didn’t seem to understand why she had to learn them, I came up with an idea. I scanned and printed the first page of our illustrated Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone edition […]

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

I’ve finally read my daughter the first Harry Potter book. I’d been holding back because she wasn’t interested, but I was increasingly worried about spoilers, especially since many of her classmates have older siblings, and they also watch movies in after-school care. But no the time had come at last. A few weeks after we […]

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 […]

This fourth work sheet for my daughter’s minority language homework came about thanks to illustrator Kirsten Carlson’s wonderful Color & Draw Journal, which gives really easy instructions to draw, among other sea creatures, Adélie penguins.

Here is the third work sheet I made for my daughter for minority language homework. They have similar work sheets in class, where they label elements of a picture. I might have gone slightly overboard here.

Following up on my previous post, here is the second work sheet I made after my daughter told me the other week that they had moved on from spring flowers to blackbirds. Again, I thought of scanning it only after she had already filled it in and I had corrected it. Note: She pointed out […]

Adam Beck of Bilingual Monkeys and the Bilingual Zoo forum repeatedly insists on the importance of an effective homework routine in the minority language. I tried my hand at it when my daughter was still in preschool, but life got in the way. And it didn’t get any better when she started at her bilingual […]

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 […]