Please, sir, may I read some more?

This morning I asked J to read a couple of pages in a German story called "Der Monster-Fänger." At work I get the following text from him: 

Moments like this make me believe that this whole L2 project of mine might actually even work in the long term!

Texting in German

A new era has begun in J's life, including his life in L2: texting! Here we are (me = green, J = white) corresponding about a Minecraft world we are working on together:

He uses his mommy's phone. Gonna be awhile before he gets his own! 

Würfelwelt

Just over a year ago we tried reading/listening to Karl Olsberg's novel Würfelwelt. J wasn't ready for it then. 

Well, he is now! We've just finished listening to the first story (also reading several chapters in the kindle version) and have started in on the second, Zurück in die Würfelwelt. 

J loves the story. It is suspenseful and well-told, and the quality of the German is high. From an L2 perspective it is very valuable; since J knows the videogame well, which is richly described in the book, he can visualize everything, picking up an enormous amount of vocabulary as he does so. 

Another L2 multiplier is that Gronkh, a well-known German YouTube artist of "Let's Play" whose Mincraft-videos J knows, is a character in the novel. So J has gone back and watched many of those old videos. In the last couple of days, I've noticed that when J has been playing Minecraft, he seems to be trying to imitate a Let's Play video by keeping up a constant stream of game-chat—in German!

Media update 297

J reading with me: Inge Meyer-Dietrich, Almud Kunert, Der kleine Drache und der Monsterhund.

Me Reading: R. Goscinny, A. Uderzo, Asterix der Gallier; Karl Olsberg, Würfelwelt (selections); DK Penguin Random House, Naturwissenschaften für clevere Kids (various pages) 

Listening: Ich weiß was, "Albert E. erklärt die großen Entdecker (49 min.); "Karl Olsberg, Würfelwelt (4.36 min.)

Viewing: RoxasLP SoraHerz, Let's Play Ratatouille, episodes 1-11 (x 2, 540 min.); IOCUZ, Let's Play Kung Fu Panda (various episodes, 230 min); Gronkh, Let's Play Mincraft (337 min).

2016
Total audio: 48.49
Total video: 66.35
Total gamplay: 6.40
Age 6.12.24 

Nutcracker reloaded

J started learning a piano piece from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker today. Tonight he asked me if we could start reading the story again, since Christmas is  approaching. "And Gustav doesn't know it yet!", he informed me. 

We had a grand time with Nutcracker last year (here, here, here, here, here, and here). 

"I'm especially excited about the battle," he told his mommy.

Asterix und Obelix

 We've just started with this:

J is really enjoying it. I had to leave the house for the afternoon after reading a section; my wife messaged me and said that he was continuing to read by himself, "standing there transfixed for about 15 mins."  

Later she added: "J just told me that France used to be called Gallien."

Anhaltspunkt

This afternoon while listening to Harry Potter, I told J that since it had been about ten years since I had read the story, I had forgotten a lot of the details and was excited about experiencing the suspense of the story again. 

When I said I didn't recall how Harry finally got hold of the first Hogwarts letter, J said: "Ok, ich gebe dir einen Anhaltspunkt: Das hat mit Hagrid zu tun!"