Kleinkonzert 3

This evening it was Mozart's piano sonata no. 11 in A major.

J especially liked the 3rd movement, the famous "Rondo alla Turca."

Frechheit 1

After a verbal tussle J says to me, "Stimmt's oder habe ich recht?"

This is a favorite phrase of the BFG in the German translation (Sophiechen und der Riese). I myself use it with J quite a bit and he probably has it more immediately from me.

Media update 294

Listening: Torben Kuhlmann, Lindbergh: Die abenteuerliche Geschichte einer fliegenden Maus (44 min.)

This is a fantastic audiobook, actually a Hörspiel, very high production values and a really great narrator who does all the roles. J really loved, by the same author and producers, Armstrong: Die abenteuerliche Reise einer Maus zum Mond. This one is just as good.

2016
Total audio: 36.36
Total video: 29.12
Total gamplay: 5.40
Age 6.10.28

L2 reading 3

I've now started working with J on L2 reading. He is already quite far along. When in Austria I got a few of these books, in which the syllables are marked in different colors (the Silbenmethode): 

I was initially skeptical concerning this method, but it really seems to work well. I'll be ordering more books like this once we're through the ones I bought.

Also, J likes to read the things that he and I have written together, and he likes to do it over and over. Today we wrote a little more on his World of Warcraft "mouse people" (the Murinae / Murinen), and at the outset he wanted to read—with Gustav—everything we had written thus far. 

Pooh-Immersion / Pu der Bär-Dauerberieselung

In our house, we more or less have Winnie The Pooh audiobooks playing loudly at all times whenever J is at home and at leisure. When it's my wife and J, it's the English version narrated by Peter Dennis. When it's J and I, it's the brilliant translation & narration by Harry Rowohlt. When it's all three of us, it can go either way. 

The result is that we are all able to work Pooh-quotes into our daily conversation, and J is able to do this in both English and German. 

Just the other day he used the word "angenommen" in this kind of sentence (not an exact quote, but similar):

"Angenommen, ich mache das: Was würde passieren?" 

This usage occurs several times in the Pooh stories, for example in ch. 8 of The House on Pooh Corner:

"Angenommen, ein Baum fällt um, wenn wir direkt darunter stehen?" [sagte Ferkel]. "Angenommen, er fällt nicht um," sagte Pu nach sorgfältigem Nachdenken.

Subjunctives 2

I have always consciously and liberally deployed the various subjuctives and J uses them frequently and accurately. 

Today he said the following: "[Die Lehrerin] dachte, ich hätte den Laptop nicht geschlossen, aber ich hatte ihn geschlossen." 

Puppets and piano practice 8: Kleinkonzerte 1 & 2

I'm working on starting a new routine, which is to sit down with J and one of the puppets and watch musicians performing. 

Last week we watched piano arrangments of two pieces J loves: "Edelweiss" and Grieg's "Morgenstimmung":

Today we watched Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata":

J pays more attention when Gustav is paying attention. Also, I take this as another opportunity to work on musical vocabulary in German with J. I got tired of constantly looking up stuff on the internet, so this summer I bought a little music theory book in Vienna. (My musical training preceded my beginning German, so I never learned German musical vocabulary in any complete or systematic way.). Here's the one I got:

Übersetzungskunst 1

"Papa, heute habe ich auf dem Spielplatz etwas Lustiges gesagt. Page hat eine Katze namens Millie gespielt, und ich habe ihr gesagt, 'Millie, komm her, aber sofort! Weißt du, wie ich 'aber sofort' übersetzt habe? 'Millie, come here, but now!' Ich dachte, das war eine sehr lustige Übersetzung."

... und zwar, 2

I first recorded J using this expression correctly more than a year ago, but he's been really using it a lot lately. He just said: "Papa, ich muss aufs Klo, und zwar sofort!" 

Kochkünste 2

Today we made a German marble cake.

Hausmaus und Waldmaus

A couple of days ago J & I and the mice performed a little scene out of our mouse book. The video is below. 

Media update 293

Reading: Julia Boehme, Silke Voigt, Toko und Mammut und der Säbelzahntiger; Meyers Kleine Kinderbibliothek, Die Maus und andere Nagetiere; Roger Hargreaves, Mister Fröhlich; Mister Niemand, Miss Böse; Mister Schnee; Mister Zackig; Mister Vergesslich; Miss Superstar; DK Penguin Random House, Naturwissenschaften für clevere Kids (various pages); Was ist Was, Schlangen: Jäger mit dem sechsten Sinn (various pages); Kathleen Pleet, Anne Stickney, World of Warcraft: Das Ultimative Kompendium. 

Listening: Torben Kuhlmann, Armstrong: Die abenteuerliche Reise einer Maus zum Mond (46 min.); Dimiter Inkiow, Jason und die Argonauten (112 min.); A.L. Milne, Pu der Bär (240 min.).

Viewing: Drachenzähmen leicht gemacht (94 min.); Dreamworks Dragons: Auf zu neuen Ufern, vol. 2 (45 min., = two episodes); Unten am Fluss / Watership Down (88 min.)

2016
Total audio: 35.52
Total video: 29.12
Total gamplay: 5.40
Age 6.10.21

Cute conversation

My wife told me she and J had approximately this conversation today (in English): 

J: "Mommy, you know I feel that I've been speaking German my whole life."

K: "Well, you practically have, honey. Daddy started speaking German with you when you were just two. You hadn't even been speaking English that long."

J: "Yeah. And I didn't want to speak German at first. That's when we got Friedel."

K: "Do you remember that?"

J: "No, Daddy told me. Friedel was the first puppet. Thusnelda came later. Thusnelda doesn't mind that Friedel is called 'the main piggy.' Except for sometimes, like on her birthday. Then she wants to be called the main piggy."

Sunday school 24: Moses 2

Listening: Die Bibel, 4:42 - 5:05 (Exodus ch. 5-9).

J got very exasperated with the Pharaoh constantly changing his mind about whether to let the Israelites go. But I pointed out that it doesn't seem to be entirely his decision, that God is also controlling the Pharaoh to a certain extent (ch. 7:3). Yesterday we worked on the verb manipulieren in another context. I brought it to bear here. 

Also, when the narrator started reading the genealogical list at 6:14, after a few names J said: "Ja, ja ..." 

Later we looked at and talked about a lot of images of the plagues, as well as did some reading:

Grocery shopping

I'm still using grocery shopping trips as L2-intensive opportunities, still with the Wieso, weshalb, warum books. This morning J sat in the cart reading with great absorption for about twenty minutes straight. 

L3

So in a couple weeks (when the books below come in), I'm going to start something I've been planning for years: Teaching J Spanish. My own Spanish, though quite rusty, is pretty good, somewhere in the intermediate range. 

Actually, after our Paris trip, J wanted to learn French (which Gustav speaks). Since both my wife and I speak French (also quite rustily but it's there), that would have worked. My wife bought some French children's books and has read them with him.

All else being equal, I would prefer French myself, since I know the language and country better than with Spanish. But all else is not equal: J has several classmates from Latin American families. There are many opportunities to speak and hear Spanish right here in Georgia. Latin America is closer to us than Europe for vacation purposes. Spanish will be much more useful to J growing up in the US. 

As far as the motivation Gustav would have provided to J with French, that's an easy one with my method: It turns out that Gustav wants to learn Spanish too, and how to cook Latin American food! 

So as not to have any switching to English, I'm going to purchase all my Spanish learning resources from Germany. I've started with these books: 

This will also help J's reading in German. 

Prepositional phrases

Since I've been back I've been noticing that J's prepositional phrases are much improved, especially in the dative case. Whereas before he would often still say that we are "in das Haus" or "in den Wagen" or "in die Schule," now he is getting them right most of the time. 

I have not yet heard or noticed examples that show me he is distinguishing cases in two-way preposition usage. I've explained this to him a few times, but mostly I just try to model it.  

Update: during J's photostory he has Ulli approaching Gustav and bowing before him: 

I used this as an opportunity to work on two-way preposition usage. Since I find J often learns best when I'm not teaching him directly, but someone else (I talk about this in my puppetry article), I addressed my instruction to Gustav:

Ulli tritt vor dich und verneigt sich vor dir. 

Gustav asked why this was the case, and I gave a grammar explanation. 

We'll see if J repeats this at next telling!

Narration

J has made a photo story with the puppets, something of a mix between Star Wars and World of Warcraft. As he was putting it together he walked me through the scenes in a very extended and complex narration (always in German of course). 

The later he wanted to show & tell everything again to Gustav. 

Great practice!

Update two hours later: In the meantime J has added another 50 photos, for a total of 100, and has told the story to Gustav twice more from beginning to end. Each time his narration has become faster and smoother, and also I've noticed he varies his vocabulary and expressions. One time he said "Thusnelda verpasst der Schlange einen Fußtritt," the next time he used the verb versetzen. Also, he incorporates my corrections, (re)formulations, and commentary very quickly. 

How to Train Your Child Bilingual / L2 reading 2

As I discuss in my essay on puppetry and child bilingualism, one of the benefits of investing time and energy in creating "authentic" puppet characters is that, with the right prompts and set-ups, the child will then narrate and explain things to a puppet who is not "in the know," leading to a lot more L2 production than if it's just you and the child, since your child assumes you already know everything. ;) 

I started doing this kind of thing after about six months, after J was capable of putting whole L2 sentences together. Every so often we would get a new puppet, and of course J needed—and wanted!—to explain everything to the new arrival all over again.

In the last couple of years, I have not done a lot of puppetry. That has changed with Gustav. Never has J been so excited about a new arrival, and in the last couple of weeks, mostly at J's initiative, we have been all over town showing Gustav out favorite spots and things to do. He has also wanted to read a lot (in German!) with Gustav ...

... and has been discoursing at length and in great detail on his favorite video games and movies. Just this morning we took a long walk and talked Star Wars—probably about an hour of more or less continual chat from J—talking about all the characters and discussing the story. Two days ago it was How to Train Your Dragon, which I brought home in German this summer: 

Here is a little clip where J is explaining something in Minecraft:

Tomorrow he returns to school and I to work, so there soon won't be as much time for this. But it has been great and very L2-productive.

darüber

For the first time I heard J spontaneously produce a correct darüber sentence:

"Ich möchte darüber reden, was wir Gustav bei Minecraft zeigen können."

But then a couple minutes later, this:

"Die Oma und ich haben geredet über wie ..." 

Still, progress! That is an advanced construction. 

wogegen

I've been working on words like dagegen and wogegen for several years now. This morning Jamie produced something very close to the following sentence: "Die Raumschiffe der Rebellion sind oft dünn und können durch enge Stellen fliegen, wogegen die Raumschiffe der dunklen Seite das nicht können, weil sie nicht so dünn sind." 

Bookish perhaps, but awesome!

Update: J produced another very similar wogegen sentence today [8.7.2016], comparing the World of Warcraft Bloodelf music with the Orgrimmar music.  

Kochkünste 1

Since J loves to help with cooking, and since Gustav is a cook, I bought a German children's cookbook while I was in Austria: 

Today we made spagetti with tomato sauce. 

Gustav studied the recipe with J very carefully. 

And the tools as well. 

And then we got cooking!

And then the best part.

Gustav

Nearly two years ago, J started exchanging emails with a certain Gustav, a rat friend of Ulli and Sabine. He wanted Gustav to come live with us. Gustav said he would, but at the time he was busy running a restaurant in Paris, so he wasn't sure when he would be able to come. He was also not the best correspondent (also here, here, here).


A few months ago, Gustav told us he would meet us in Paris when we were there this summer. It was a big deal, and J was talking about it weeks before the trip. 

Gustav met us at the Eiffel tower. Here is the moment of the meeting:

And here the reunion with Ulli and Sabine:

Since then J has had Gustav with him pretty much at all times. Here are some other pictures from Paris: 

It had actually been several months since I had done a lot of puppetry, but now it's as if J is three years old again! He wants me to "do Gustav" all the time, and he wants to explain everything to Gustav. Great for language. In the next weeks there will probably be a lot of Gustav-related posts.