Animal pen pals 1: Gustav the rat

Gustav the rat is the close friend of J's two mouse puppets, Ulli and Sabine, and of Franziska, the flying-squirrel puppet. 

Gustav

He lives in Germany. J invited him last spring to come for a visit, but he is very busy (he's also a close friend of Remy, the rat in Ratatouille) and hasn't yet had time to make the trip. So instead he and J write emails back and forth.  

Today while listening to the reptile audiobook, J heard a bit about the endangered environment that really bothered him, so he proposed writing a letter about it to Gustav. With a little bit of help from Franziska, J dictated the letter below. I wrote it down and subsequently sent to to Gustav via email.

Lieber Gustav,

Heute Morgen haben wir darüber gehört, wie der Lebensraum von Tieren verschwindet. Wir möchten, dass Du den Tieren, die das nicht wissen, Briefe wie dieser Brief schreibst, um sie davor zu warnen. Wir haben beim Naturzentrum auch darüber gelernt, dass es Öl in einem kleinen Bach gibt und dass dieses Öl von Autos kommt. Der Regen wäscht [sic] das Öl in die Kanalisation und es kommt bei dem kleinen Bach 'raus.

Deine Freunde,
Jamie und Franziska

(Dear Gustav, Today we heard about how the habitat of animals is disappearing. We would like you to write letters like this letter to the animals that don't know this and warn them about it. At the nature center we also learned that there is oil in a little stream and that this oil comes from cars. The rain washes it into the sewers and it comes out at the stream. Your friends, Jamie and Franziska)

Literary-critical Sunday school, part 3

Reading: The Beginner's Bible, 327-370. 

Listening: Die Bibel (1984 revision of the Luther Bible), Genesis ch. 1-3; Margot Käßmann, Die Bibel für Kinder, 13:30-17:30.

I introduced Jamie to Old Testament stories about a year and a half ago. We have read, listened to, and seen numerous versions of the biblical creation; Adam & Eve; Noah and the ark; the tower of Babel; Abraham; Joseph; the Moses story up to and including the ten commandments; Samson; David and Goliath; Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego; Daniel; and Jonah. We once started a Cain & Abel story, but J wanted to stop right away and has not wanted to return to it yet.

With most of the stories above we have also read and listened to the Luther bible. We have been through Genesis ch. 1-3 some half dozen times already; it is one of J's favorite sections. The language is formulaic and not particularly difficult. 

Thus far I try to let the stories speak for themselves, let J initiate conversation on the things that interest him, and seek to draw out his insights. For example, this morning he asked flat out why God planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil if he didn't want Adam and Eve to eat from it. 

von Max Hoh (7 Jahre)

I told him that it was a great question, that it was the question, and that I couldn't answer it! Whereupon J said: Gott hätte ihn wegpflanzen sollen ("God should have planted it away"). When I asked him if he meant that God should have planted it somewhere else, he agreed, but then said: Er sollte ihn sterben lassen ("He should have let it die"). In the ensuing discussion I didn't get a clear sense of what he meant by that.  

I don't try to answer questions J hasn't yet asked. For example, he is also very interested in the big bang and has learned a lot about it, but has not yet begun asking questions about how it squares with Genesis. I did and do introduce bible stories as "stories," but J has occasionally asked if biblical characters really lived. In the case of Jesus I told him definitely, Moses and David possibly, and in the case of the others we don't know. 

I've only engaged in "biblical criticism" on one occasion. I told J at the outset that Christians generally consider the serpent in Genesis 3 to be the devil, but that I don't think this, that the people who actually wrote the story didn't think this, that the serpent is a trickster, as the text says, and that there are also helpful serpents in the Old Testament (Exodus 4, 2-4 and 7, 9-12; Numbers 21:9). 

My beef with the Christian reading goes all the way back to my own boyhood, when it really troubled me, since I loved snakes so much. 

Further listening: Albert E. erklärt Kroko & Co., 39:50-46:00.

Age 5.1.4

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Albert E. erklärt Kroko & Co., 29:30-39:50. 

Age 5.1.3

New bilingualism research 1

Anna Christiansen, "Speaking two languages is better for your brain than Sudoku." The study referred to, by Viorica Marian et al., is here. 

I'll be trying to keep abreast of new developments in bilingualism research on this site. 

One comment on the Christiansen article. At the end the author writes: "It appears that bilingual speakers have a competitive advantage." This kind of thing is almost always the "takeaway" in popular reportage on bilingualism. Now, I'm very happy that recent research has put the old fear to rest that bilingualism negatively affects a wide range of cognitive abilities.* But personally, I like to think of the advantages in terms of expanding the possibilities of communication with other people, not increasing competitive edge over them. For me, teaching my son a second language is about raising a better global citizen, not about tooling up a little capitalist.

*See the literature cited at Wikipedia, "Cognitive advantages of bilingualism" (History), notes 2-5.

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Listening: Albert E. erklärt Kroko & Co, 17:00-29:30.

Viewing: Der Räuber Hotzenplotz (2006; 94 min.), featuring the incomparable Armin Rohde in the main role. 

This is the second movie version of the story J has seen since we read the books and listened to the audiobooks  (masterfully narrated by same Rohde) this past summer. J also enjoyed the 1974 film available free on Youtube, although it's longer and not quite as snappy as the 2006 movie. This children's theater version also went over very well. 

At some point I'll do a more substantial post on Otfried Preußler's Hotzenplotz, which, because of Preußler's brilliance with language, is filled with "sweet spots" J wants to hear over and over again. 

Age 5.1.2

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Max Kruse, Urmel aus dem Eis, ch. 3-4.

Age 5.1.1. Happy birthday Jamie, Happy Thanksgiving all!

New puppet

Tomorrow is J's fifth birthday, and we're introducing a new puppet friend, Sigi the bat, who is flying in from Germany to join his bat-wife, Aline Louise. 

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances there there will be a delay in Sigi's arrival. He wrote a letter to J explaining what happened:

Lieber Jamie,
Hallo, hier ist Sigi, der Fledermäuserich. Ich bin ja der Fledermausmann der Fledermäusin Aline Louise. Die Aline Louise hat mir bedeutet, ich müsse unbedingt zu Deinem fünften Geburtstag da sein, um Dir ganz persönlich herzliche Geburtstagswünsche zu überbringen, und ich bin auch rechtzeitig von Deutschland weggeflogen. Aber weißt Du, was mir unterwegs zugestoßen ist? Wirst Du nicht glauben. In einem verflixten und zugenähten Eisbergschwimmgebirge im atlantischen Ozean hat mich mein Ultraschall in die Irre geleitet, und ich bin statt in Amerika auf Island gelandet. So was Beknacktes! Du, es tut mit echt leid, dass ich an Deinem Geburtstag nicht da sein kann, aber ich verspreche, dass es nur noch ein paar Tage dauert, bis ich bei Euch bin. Und weißt Du, wie ich das mache? Ich hatte einen tollen Einfall. Stell Dir vor: Da ich von der ganzen Fliegerei total geschafft bin, werde ich mich einfach mit der Post schicken lassen! Da kann ich mich in dem Päckchen schön ausruhen. Bitte sag der Aline Louise Bescheid. Herzlichen Glückwünsch und auf bald!
Dein Sigi

Overinterpreting Das Urmel: linguistic, scientific and gender trouble ... but in a good way!

Speaking animals are obviously the bread and butter of children's literature. One aspect of Max Kruse's special genius in the Urmel stories lay in giving his animals comical speech "defects." Once my son became aware of these, he wanted to listen to the animal dialogues over and over and soon began to imitate the patterns. 

The most pronounced speech peculiarity belongs to Ping the penguin, who can't pronounce sch and says pf instead: 

Muschel > Mupfel
schrecklich > pfrecklich
schöne Sterne > pföne Pfterne
Schweinefleisch > Pfweinefleipf

In the wake of J's first encounter with Ping, he started asking and then telling me in the course of normal conversation how Ping would say this or that word or phrase. He still does this quite often, a year later. At first he had trouble distinguishing sch from ch, which Ping doesn't have trouble pronouncing. J has gotten a lot of practice on these sounds (sch, ch, pf), none of which are found in English. 

The other speech peculiarities are more subtle: the Urmel says d- and t- at the beginning of words instead of g- and k- ("danz toll"; "der Trankheit"); Wawa says tsch instead of z ("gantsch plötschlich"); Schusch says ä instead of i ("Mär äst was eingefallen"); the Seelefant ö instead of i and e ("Ös öst söhr traurög"). This is all quite challenging to read. Up to now, J has only really glommed on to Schusch's manner of speaking, though he has not begun to imitate it yet.

All in all, beyond the pronunciation practice, the Urmel stories are great for fostering attention to the nuances of speech and general linguistic awareness on multiple levels. 

One interesting question they subtly raise has to do with linguistic normativity: To what extent do we want to say that the animals speak "incorrectly," and to what extent do they simply have their own ways of speaking—their own idiolects? The stories empower the latter perspective in no small measure.

The way that science is handled is also quite nuanced. Evolution plays a major role in the Urmel world, and the stories are a great way of introducing and/or exploring that science with a child. The sophistication has to do with the way that science and what one might call practical philosophy are put in tension. 

Professor Tibatong, in addition to considering the Urmel as a means to an end (rescuing his reputation as a scientist), sees it in scientific terms, i.e., as the evolutionary "missing link" between reptiles and mammals. Accordingly, he doesn't quite grant the Urmel full legitimacy of being. For him, it represents a "bridge" between one category or class of animal and another; nor does it, as a relic from the past, fully participate in the present. The professor is not nearly the worst example of "means-thinking" in the stories, but he is not immune to it.

The Urmel, for its part, insists on absolute real-presence, stubbornly resisting the idea that it is a "link" or a "bridge" between anything, or anything other than precisely who it is right now and an end in itself. 

So these stories are underwritten by a real love and respect for evolutionary science, but there is also a very gentle critique of tendencies within that discourse toward teleological thinking and toward the ontological reification of abstract categories at the expense of lived creaturely life. This kind of thinking is often found in explanations of evolution for a young audience. For example, on p. 40 of this book,

A young person can read the following description of the Blind Snake (emphases mine):

A throwback to prehistoric reptiles, the primitive BLIND SNAKE (Typhlops sp.) has adapted to a life underground: smooth, even scales, a blunt head, and eyes so reduced that they are little more than points under the skin. Found worldwide, this snake is considered by some experts to be little more than a degenerate blind lizard.

Nice. If they're so primitive and degenerate, how have they managed to spread all over the world?

The question about the Urmel's identity also extend into gender: We never learn if it is male or female. There are debates in the internet over this. The Urmel, again, though a juvenile, expresses sovereign disregard for this kind of classification. Here, too, in an age where popular commercial culture anxiously demands you begin shaping your child's identity according to reductive and psycho-socially impoverishing gender categories even before their birth, the Urmel offers a salutary little moment of resistance. 

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Listening: Otfried Preußler, Der kleine Wassermann (Hörspiel), 1:16-1:52:30 (end). 

At 1:21:00 the narrator says that the moon will shine "until the end of time" (bis an das Ende der Zeiten). Here J interjected and said that he didn't believe that there would be an end of time, that "astronauts" said there would be but that he didn't think so. When I asked him if he thought the world and the universe would last forever (picking up on our discussion of Unendlichkeit from a few days ago), as some people think, he also said no. We discussed this for awhile. I told him that "until the end of time" was an expression people used usually without thinking too much about what it actually meant. 

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Reading: Otfried Preußler, Der kleine Wassermann, ch. 18-20 (end). Max Kruse, Urmel aus dem Eis, ch. 1-2. 

J & I first encountered the Urmel stories exactly a year ago, via the audiobook version of a later story in the series, Urmel saust durch die Zeit, followed by numerous videos and a feature film. I'll do a more substantive post on the Urmel & Co. later; it's one of J's very favorite narrative worlds in ways that have a lot to do with love of language. 

Age 4.12.25

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Listening: Albert E. erklärt Kroko & Co., 0:00-17:00.

Reading: Otfried Preußler, Der kleine Wassermann, ch. 16-17

Age 4. 12.24

Piggybacking L2 on L1 movies

Since L2 time is so precious, I rarely watch anything with J in English when we are alone together, but today I made an exception for Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole. J was very excited about this film. He loves owls! 

Owl in Boots

We tried to watch Guardians last year, but didn't get far because J found it too dark. This time he was the one who suggested it. We got all the resident owls out to watch with us.   

Mitzchen, Käuzli, Wol, Nuhura, Butch Butchy

Whenever J watches any new film in English, I always try to do prep and follow-up in German, both to exploit the heightened receptivity occasioned by the excitement of a new film, and also to make sure that J always has exactly what he needs in the L2 to talk about any new experience right when it is happening. In my experience, this significantly reduces code-switching when anything to do with the movie comes up in subsequent discussions. 

For prep I go to Wikipedia, where one can usually find a plot summary in German. I read the opening paragraphs, introduce the main characters, and drop one or two suspenseful details about what happens in later parts of the film. For follow-up (usually as bedtime reading that evening), J likes it when I read through the entire plot summary and we reminisce about our favorite parts.

In years past, before J's German was up to speed, I would copy the plot summary of a film we were about to watch onto a Googledoc, then spend a little time simplifying the German down to his level before reading it to him. Here are links to a couple of those texts, which anyone should feel free to use:

Ice Age 

Ice Age 2 jetzt taut's

Das große Krabbeln (A Bug's Life)

NB: These are not the original edits, but rather represent two or three stages of progressive revision. Unfortunately I always revised the original document instead of retaining copies of all the versions, as I should have done.

Literary-critical Sunday school, part 2

Reading: The Beginner's Bible, 266-327; Listening: Margot Käßmann, Die Bibel für Kinder, part 2, 2:15-13:30. 

Since last week's New Testament reading in the more advanced children's bibles wasn't very productive, I decided to go back to the Beginner's Bible, in which every episode is told in a few pages, each page featuring one big picture and a few lines of simple text which is very easy to spontaneously translate into German. 

We got from the nativity up through the Roman centurion and his servant. J could follow much more easily. When I asked him what he wanted to listen to in the car after reading, he said the bible, up to the place where we had read, which tells me he had understood everything and was now excited about hearing "a different version." (See my post on different versions of the same story) 

The part in the Sermon on the Mount about the carefree birds and flowers (see image above) gave rise to an interesting discussion about how Jesus, although he knows what's going on in people's hearts and minds, perhaps isn't the best observer of nature, because from J's experience, birds and other animals work incredibly hard to get food, feed their babies, etc., and many of them do indeed "store up food." We did agree with Jesus that the flowers don't do much—although they, too, have a hard time and sometimes even die when it doesn't rain for weeks at a time. 

Further listening: Albert E. erklärt die Sinnesorgane, 30:00-45:00 (End); Sophiechen und der Riese, 1:55-2:02. 

Further reading: Otfried Preußler, Der kleine Wassermann, ch. 15-16.  

Age 4.12.23 

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Reading: Otfried Preußler, Der kleine Wassermann, ch. 14

Listening, Der kleine Wassermann (Hörspiel), 1:05-1:16; Albert E. erklärt unsere Sinnesorgane, 18:00-30:00. 

At 18:46 there's a sweet spot where Albert is talking about how even in the case of very uncomplicated creatures like the earthworm, the brain is all-important:

Selbst der Wurm würde ohne sein Wurmgehirn ziemliche Wurmprobleme bekommen und beim Wurmen ganz unwurmig umwurmen, aber hallo!

("Without its worm brain, even the worm would have serious worm problems and would, while worming, worm around very unwormily, let me tell you!")

3 reps requested amid great hilarity.

At 27:25 begins the story of Michael, a little boy who lost his sight in an accident. J bombarded me with questions during this story, especially about the accident. Nothing is said about the particulars, so I paused the recording and we had a long speculation about how such a thing might happen. 

Age 4.12.22

Puppets and piano practice, part 1

I freely admit, I bring a lot of unhealthy baggage to my son's piano practice. The puppets help me with that. 

I am a failed classical musician, and I lay heavy blame on my parents. As a child, whenever I was in a room with a piano (practically every week at my cousins' house), I would sit and tap out little pieces and compositions. My folks never got a clue. Later, at 13, when I expressed interest in the guitar, they bought me a K-Mart special with string action so high it was unplayable. That killed three more years, after which I finally took it into my own hands to get a decent instrument and some instruction—ad hoc via my cousin, not actual lessons. 

But 16 is simply too late a beginning for someone with performance ambitions in the world of classical music, as would become painfully clear to me when I studied classical guitar in college.

One unhealthy way this baggage has manifested itself is that I was overzealous in redressing it in J's case, such that we probably started his piano lessons too early (at 4.8). We should have waited until he was 6 or 7. But the biggest problem is that I have a very hard time being patient during practice. This sets up a nasty feedback loop: I get impatient, J feels bad and wants to stop playing, which makes me more impatient, etc. I really don't feel I have this problem in any other area—just with music. And self-awareness doesn't seem to help much, at least when it's just J and me at the piano. 

This is where the puppets come in.  

I have always used them in encouraging J's interest in music, for example by providing another enthusiastic audience:

But  a couple of weeks ago, when the piano experience became so negative that we were talking about stopping the lessons, I realized that the puppets could do much more to help. They could conduct the practice sessions with J all on their own. Here, my wife was the pioneer. One day when I wasn't around, she had one of J's favorite stuffed kitties lead a practice, and it went great. She says she was just employing my methods, but for some reason this had just not occurred to me.  

So I've turned it all over to the puppets now. They suggest the practice session, they prep the pieces, they offer corrections and comments, and they sing along. Everything is more relaxed, a little slower, and, of course, there is lots of silliness. But there is also progress. J listens to the puppets far better than to me, and the puppet personalities are so established that I am able to be more patient when I am in character than when I am just myself. Friedel, for example, is the essence of porcine chill; it is unthinkable and unfeelable to get impatient with J while I am doing Friedel.

Or almost unfeelable. And here is the real rub. Now, when I do find myself getting impatient, I simply have the puppets turn to me and slap me down, like this:

"Herr Sager, halten Sie bitte den Schnabel! Sie haben gesagt, Sie wollten sich nicht mehr einmischen. Das haben Sie versprochen! Der Kleine meint, Sie sind zu streng und zu ungeduldig. Er mag es, wenn wir mit ihm üben, mit Ihnen mag er's halt nicht. Wir können's besser machen. Wenn Sie geduldig sein können, dann dürfen Sie ab und zu was sagen, aber bitte nicht zu viel!"

("Herr Sager, please shut your trap! You said you would not interfere. You promised! J said that you are too strict and too impatient. He likes practicing with us, he doesn't like practicing with you. We can do it better! If you can be patient, you can say things sometimes, but please not too much!")

J loves it when the puppets lay into me, and this has restored real enjoyment to the practice sessions. Castigating myself in this way—sometimes with real vehemence—is a tangible psychological release, helping me work through the bugbears and develop more real patience in this area.

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Roald Dahl, Sophiechen und der Riese, 1:51-1:56. 

A nice touch is that where the English original refers to "Jack the giant-killer," the German version refers to the Grimm tale "Das tapfere Schneiderlein" ("The Brave Little Tailor") and works in the catchphrase Sieben auf einen Streich. 

The Brave Little Tailor by Alexander Zick

I read this story to J a year or so ago and he seemed to dimly recall it. 

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Reading: Brandon Justiz, Monster und mythische Kreaturen. J wanted to read the bit about the Teumessian Fox and Laelaps again, one of his favorite stories. He loves the eternal chase-flight conundrum. 

The mousie puppets Ulli and Sabine acted it out while reading. 

Listening: Roald Dahl, Sophiechen und der Riese, 1:30 - 1:51. This section includes the chapter on "dream-catching." 

In German, a golden phizzwizard is ein goldener Schlummi (presumably from schlummern, "to sleep/slumber") and a trogglehumper is ein Borstenbuckler. 

Dahl generally translates or adapts very well into German, since most of his wordplay is based on Germanic elements and materials within English, especially word-stems, like these:  

snozzberries > Schniefbeeren
snozzcumbers > Kotzgurken

Here J and I debated why snozz- was translated in two different ways, whether we could also say Schniefgurken or Kotzbeeren, or maybe even Schnauzbeeren or Schnauzgurken.  

At 1:44:30 there's a funny bit where Guri (short for Guter Riese, i.e. the BFG) tells Sophiechen to "think about it": 

"Dann leg' es Dir bitte jetzt mal über!" 

Which is a mistake, since the prefix (über) of the verb überlegen can't be separated from the stem. It would have to be: 

"Dann überleg' es Dir bitte jetzt mal!" 

I laughed when I heard this and J laughed too. I'm not absolutely sure he heard what was wrong the first time, but I think he did, because I use this verb constantly and he too now for several months. Anyway, I explained it, and he wanted to hear it several times again. Then, when I picked him up from his grandmother's this afternoon, the first thing he said to me was "Papa, leg' dir das mal über!" and then laughed.

Viewing: Der Räuber Hotzenplotz (2006), 0:00-45:00. We got this from Kinderkino.de.

Age 4.12.20

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Reading: Brandon Justiz, Monster und mythische Kreaturen: Altes Griechenland. 

This is a great little read (and cheap!), designed for tablet, with delightful quirky pictures and nice short physical descriptions of the monsters. Excellent practice of the dative and genitive case, including with weak nouns, for example Der Greif hat den Körper eines Löwen und Flügel und Gesicht eines Adlers.

When J noticed one evening that some of the snakes have different expressions, I asked him how he thought each of them was feeling about being in Medusa's head helping turn folks to stone. We proceeded to ask them, one by one, and they gave various answers, most infamous of course, but a few conscience-stricken. Now we go through this each time and J does most of the voices. So it's not such a short read anymore!


Listening: Otfried Preußler, Der kleine Wassermann (1:02-1:06); Brothers Grimm, "Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten." See my other post on this today.

Viewing: Die furchtlosen Vier (c. 0:00-60:00)

Age 4.12.19

The Musicians of Bremen, or, the Donkey as Pedagogue

As I write this, J is getting a morning fix of Die furchtlosen Vier, a 1997 remake of the well-known Brothers Grimm fairy tale "Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten" ("The Musicians of Bremen") about the abused animals who band together against the exploitative world of humans. 

This story was the first fairy tale J experienced first in German, and it has remained very close to his heart (and therefore mine) ever since. In addition to the Grimm tale, he has had read and has heard, seen, retold and played numerous versions.*

It was also in connection with this story that I first began working on one of my fundamental concerns, which is to make J aware of the extent to which all narrative is constructed, contingent, and subject to revision and variation, and also to get him to think and talk about the effect different versions of the same story have on him and why. 

I have done this most consistently with fairy tales and bible stories, two groups of narrative for which a large number of versions are available for children in all forms of media. The ultimate goal is both to school the aesthetic sensibility and to develop skills for dealing critically with any and all narratives and narrative traditions that purport to be authoritative, fixed, authentic, originary, and in whatever way not to be questioned. The bible and fairy tales are also prime examples of such traditions (fairy tales less so today, but once upon a time, in the age of romantic nationalism ...). 

Here are the kinds of questions I first began ask (first modeling with the puppets) during each new version:

• Have you noticed how in this version there is this or that new thing or new character/scene, or that this or that character/scene is missing? 
• Have you noticed how this version is set in this new place? 
• You know what I noticed? In the last version the character did this one thing, but in this version he does this other thing. That's interesting!
• You know what I noticed? In in this version this character is nicer/meaner/funnier/sadder etc. than in the other versions.
• You know what I noticed? This version ends this new way. I like/don't like this ending because ...., but I like/don't like that other ending because ... 

After a certain point J began to ask these same sorts of questions himself, and he does so all the time now. 

The story of the Bremen musicians is also critical in spirit and works on two levels: on a literal level it is about the exploitation of animals by humans, and on the allegorical level about the exploitation of workers by profit-seekers. The strangely ambiguous ending (do the animals actually succeed, or do they fail?) is, in my view and experience, a salutary yet gentle provocation for a little mind swamped in a culture of facile, shiny-happy narrative closure. 

Here are links to some of Jamie's favorite visual versions of the Bremen musicians:

1959 film (75 min)
1972 Muppet version (English)(50 min) 
1987 anime version (20 min)
Die furchtlosen Vier (1997)(87 min)
2009 film (60 min)
Puppet theater (ARD/Kleine Bühne, 1980s)(30 min)
storybook version with images (8 min)
animated storytime video (8:21 min)
short storytime video with Axel Prahl (4:15 min)

*It was during one of his reenactments that I first overheard J speaking to himself in L2, in late summer 2012 (Age 2.9, after eight months of L2). 

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Otfried Preußler, Der kleine Wassermann, ch. 13

Age 4.12.18

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Today is my day of the week with J alone. From seven in the morning until seven I night, except for his half-hour piano lesson and an afternoon video, I talk German with him virtually non-stop, until my voice is hoarse and my brain is fried. This has been our routine for nearly three years now. We will be able to do it for eight more months, then J enters kindergarten and things will change. I'm worried that it will be for the worse with regard to L2, so I want to get as much into his brain while the gettin' is good. My hope is that I can build his German up high enough on a wide and dense enough base with deep enough roots that it can thereafter be sustained and further cultivated with the less time and effort I will perforce be able to invest. 

***

This morning as we puttered around the house I played various St. Martin songs and stories from YouTube in order to reinforce what we did yesterday. 

We read about toilets and refrigerators in Technik bei uns zu Hause, one of the awesome Wieso - Weshalb - Warum series. 

After we worked through this diagram (third or fourth time in as many months), J insisted on taking the piggies into the bathroom and taking the top off the the toilet tank so he could point out and explain how everything worked. 

Then we watched two of his favorite Sachgeschichten (stories about how things work) from Sendung mit der Maus, on rocket and jet engines. We have probably watched these two a dozen times over the past six months or so. 

After that, we read Otfried Preußler, Der kleine Wassermann, ch. 11-12. 

In the car, after we caught up on Der kleine Wassermann (Hörspiel, part 5, 51:00-1:02:04), we started Die Geschichte des Fliegens, 0:00-13:00 (second listening). At 12:00 there is a sweet spot where Albert talks about what goes into balloons so that they will rise. Apparently, what does not go into them is ketchup (five reps and crazy laughs). I must say, in terms of the child-mind this series kennt seinen Pappenheimer.

We took a long walk at the Botanical Gradens and talked about everything under the sun. Concerning raccoons J noted: "Wenn ein Waschbär etwas alleine nicht fertig bringt, dann holt er noch ein paar andere 'ran" ("When one raccoon can't do something by himself, he goes and gets a couple others").  

This afternoon J watched Der kleine Eisbär im großen Hafen (26 mins). He must have seen this two dozen times already, but it has been several months since the last time.  

Age 4.12.17   

Saint Martin's Day

Yesterday we celebrated Saint Martin's Day (Nov. 11) with the Germanophone kiddies at the apartment complex of one of our group.

After some twilight tennis, playground horseplay, and dinner, we fired up the homemade lanterns, I strapped on my guitar, and the twelve of us (four adults and eight kids) put on a very respectable little Laternenlaufen for the neighborhood. We sang "Ich geh mit meiner Laterne" and "Sankt Martin ritt durch Schnee und Wind" numerous times, and in numerous keys. We got a lot of funny looks from passing drivers! Then we all went back to the house and had tasty homemade Weckmänner.

J was excited for days beforehand. In preparation we watched and talked about this lovely video from Sendung mit der Maus:

Literary-critical Sunday school, part 1

Reading: Annamarie Benedikt, Die Kinderbibel, early chapters of the New Testament. Listening: Margot Käßmann, Die Bibel für Kinder, 0:00-11:00 of New Testament; Otfried Preußler, Der kleine Wassermann, part 4, 33:40-51:00; Roald Dahl, Sophiechen und der Riese, part 1, 1:02-1:32. Viewing: Der König der Löwen (85 min.)

This is our first serious excursion into New Testament stories. It's not easy going for a four-year old to make sense out of the sprawling and yet fragmentary narrative of Jesus's and John the Baptist's infancy and then sudden adulthood, with only one—for J totally non-interesting—episode from boyhood, the scene in the temple. Today we discussed the manger and John's diet of locusts and honey, which led to a conversation about different dietary habits in different cultures. 

The Dahl was much more exciting, since the section we covered today features the snozzcumbers (Kotzgurken) and frobscottle (Blubberwasser). Before we got to the latter, J interrupted because he first wanted to explain to me how the frobscottle works. 

With Wassermann J wanted to hear the song from part 3 again and then sang whole sections of it during the day, so that's definitely a very sweet spot. Here was also, I believe, the first time J used the verb vergleichen (to compare), which I've been stressing a lot in my own speech. He said something like, "The little water sprite is kind of dumb. He compares every new thing he sees with something from home." I assured him that this was not at all dumb, it's just that the sprite is very young and hasn't seen much of the world yet. I reminded J that he first thought that airplanes were birds. He laughed.

With König der Löwen last week J said after some of Scar's dialogue that "I understand it better now in German than in English," which warmed my heart. My wife said it was probably because of the British accent in the English. But still!

Age 4.12.16

Little conversation starters

If you speak to your child in the L2, and they understand and respond in the L1, that's good. We should never lose sight of the fact that this qualifies as L2 success and if it never gets beyond this, you have accomplished something major: Your child understands a second language!

However, if you speak to your child in the L2, and they understand and respond in the L2, that's obviously much better. It's awesome. It's huge. But it's so awesome that I think a lot of people consider it the very definition of L2 success. It isn't. 

Best of all is when your child to speaks to you in the L2, and you understand and respond in the L2. That is, when your child actively initiates new L2 conversations of their own accord and in their own terms and about things on their own little mind. 

Ideally, there should be no difference in the frequency with which they do this in the L2 compared to the L1. 

A lot of very simple and concrete things can serve to empower children in this way. I'll have more on this later, but one thing that has worked for me from very early on is to seed daily interactions with spontaneous little conversation starters like the following: 

Hey Kleiner, weißt du, was mir aufgefallen ist? ("Hey little man, you know what I've noticed?" Then I point out some—any!—funny or interesting thing I have observed, and we talk and/or laugh about it.)

Hey Kleiner, weißt du, was mir eingefallen ist? ("Hey little man, you know what's just occurred to me?" Then I describe some—any!—funny or interesting thought, etc.)  

Hey Kleiner, weißt du noch, wie ...? ("Hey little man, remember how ... ?" Then I recall some—any!—meaningful experience, and we reminisce.)  

Once I had modeled these enough (first with the puppets), my son began to use them himself, and he does to this day. In my experience, if you make a habit of keeping the thoughts that follow these intros quite short (one or two sentences), the child is more likely to use them.