Puppetry today 2

The two hours this morning before J's school were a whirl of puppetry. First, he wanted a reprise of the Tannenbaum game from last night. This time we got through all three stanzas. I even managed to work in a bit of literary criticism by having the piggies ask what the last stanza means:

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,
Dein Kleid will mich was lehren:
Die Hoffnung und Beständigkeit
Gibt Mut und Kraft zu jeder Zeit!
O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,
Dein Kleid will mich was lehren.

I told them it's about how the tree means two things at the same time. First and most importantly, the tree just means itself, but secondly, it's also a symbol for something else which is a little harder to explain. Then I elucidated a bit what the connection is between the evergreen needles and hope and constancy. 

The puppets are great way of introducing such things, by the way. J himself, of course, is not at the point of asking such questions himself. Nor is he much interested in hearing lectures from me out of the blue. But he pays very close attention when the puppets ask me questions. We have been through some version of the above scenario probably some half-dozen times in the past year, and by now J will volunteer things like "Das ist ein Symbol für ________" and "Das ist ein Zeichen von _________". 

After this J wanted to do some drawing and coloring. He opened his coloring book to some peafowl, which he is very interested in. So he went and got Percy, our resident peacock (also from Folksmanis), and the three of us sat around the table while J colored, I read out loud about peafowl, and Percy commented.  

All the while J was humming O Tannenbaum, so then, as we often do with songs, we tried to come up with new lyrics. Here is what we worked out with Percy, then with Ulli (mouse) and Franziska (gliding squirrel). Lines and words J came up with by himself are marked in green. 

O Vogelpfau, O Vogelpfau,
wie schön sind deine Federn!
Sie leuchten durch das ganze Jahr,
besonders wenn es draußen klar,
O Vogelpfau, O Vogelpfau,
wie schön sind deine Federn.

O Gleithörnchen, O Gleithörnchen,
Du bist ein guter Gleiter!
Du gleitest schön von Baum zu Baum,
Du gleitest über Schaum und Pflaum.
O Gleithörnchen, O Gleithörnchen,
Du bist ein guter Gleiter!

(Scansion of the first line doesn't quite work, but we make it work.)

O Mäuseli, O Mäuseli,
Du bist ein guter Renner!
Du huschst im ganzen Haus herum ...

Then something about cheese as we arrived at school... 

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, wie treu sind deine ...

This evening as we were decorating the Christmas tree, Friedel and Thusnelda broke into O Tannenbaum. 

When they sang "Wie treu sind deine Blätter," J corrected them and said that Christmas trees don't have Blätter (leaves), but rather Nadeln (needles) and that it should be "Wie treu sind deine Nadeln." The piggies insisted that the words were right and sang it in his face, whereupon he squished their mouths shut. There followed about 10 minutes of horseplay where the piggies sang things like O Jamiebaum, O Jamiebaum, wie grün sind deine Ohren whenever he let their mouths out of his grip. He finally had to sit on them.

Thusnelda told J that people first started decorating Christmas trees in Germany a long time ago. She also told him that the custom was actually started by wild pigs, not humans. According to her, they would use their tusks to hook the ornaments and hang them up on the trees. "Das ist völliger Quatsch" (complete nonsense) J said.

I also read to J a bit about Christmas trees on Wikipedia, including a few sentences each from the Allemanic and Bavarian entries. I told him these were different kinds of German people spoke in certain areas of Germany and Switzerland. When I asked him if he could understand any of it, he said no.