Media today 159

Reading: Roger Hargreaves, Miss Vielfraß; Kathryn Lasky, Die Legende der Wächter 1. Die Entführung, loc. 2274 - 2423 (kindle edition).Listening: A. A. Milne, Pu der Bär, 3.18 - 4.18. Viewing: Rabadabading, "Meine knuffige Minecraftwelt" (39 min.) Das Leben der Verlassenen #01 (15 min); Die Sendung mit der Maus, Sachgeschichten, "Filmtricks" (29 min. x 2)

The passage in A House on Pooh Corner ch. 4 in which Pooh and Piglet discuss how "Jagulars" sit up in trees and "drop on you as you walk by" is even funnier in German than in English because "dropper" is translated "Fallenlasser," a much sillier word; J wanted to listen to this scene five times.

The Sachgeschichte about film special effects really baked the boy's noodle. We watched it together and discussed it, and he was so fascinated that I then let him watch it again right away. (I find that a second viewing—or listening, or reading—especially when it follows right after the first, is very good for language-understanding purposes, since one knows what is coming and can understand words better when the context is known. Moreover, Arnim Maiwald, the host-narrator of the Sachgeschichten ... 

... has a very mumbly way of talking that is good training to listen to and contrasts with the typical audiobook or television narrator, who artificially pronounce every. word. very. clearly.)

Also, when the arrow-through-the apple trick was demonstrated using a scene from Wilhelm Tell, J mentioned that this scene is used in the apple app he plays with alot. I was impressed; we haven't ever discussed the story before. Guess it's time to order this:

Total audio 2015: 45.54
Total video 2015: 70.53
Age 5.8.22

Media today 55

Reading: Faith McNulty, How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World (sight translated); Max Kruse, Urmel aus dem Eis, ch. 31-32.

Viewing: Es war einmal das Leben, "Die Atmung" (26:00), "Das Herz" (26:25); "Das Gehirn" (26:37); FWU (Institut für Film und Bild in Wissenschaft und Unterricht), "Die Atmung" (10:50).

The McNulty book is one I used to sight-translate to J about two years ago. I remember it being quite difficult back then, because I wasn't practiced in how to describe machines and mechanical-physical operations. Two years of reading, listening to, and watching "how things work"-type stuff with J has made it much easier.

We are close to the end of the Urmel story. We've decided that we won't read any more stories in the book for awhile, since the language is still rather too advanced. Here's what J said:

"Der Mensch, der dieses Buch geschrieben hat, macht viele Worte, wo die Leute nur so 'rumplappern!", at which he made his hands into mouths and them make blabbing motions while moving them up and down and going "Bla bla bla bla bla!" 

Apt description of the narrator's rather verbose style.   
Es war einmal das Leben is the German dub of a French animated series on how the body works. J has been watching it off and on for about two years. It's cute and quirky. Basically it's a voyage inside the body, where every physical process and phenomenon is anthropomorphized. Here are the red blood cells carrying oxygen: 

And here are the white blood cells, the "body police":

The only problem is that there is no narrator, and a lot of what's going on doesn't clearly emerge from the dialogue and is actually not that easy to figure out. J asks "What's going on here?" at every turn. I usually sit with him for at least one video and try to explain. 

By the way: This show was broadcast in 30 countries, but not in the US. If you watch just the opening sequence and how the bodies of the young people are represented, you get a sense of why not: 

 

This show is underwritten by a very different attitude toward sexuality than prevails in the United States. 

Total audio 2015: 9:58

Total video 2015: 12:27

Age 5.3.22 

Media today 38

David Macaulay, Das große Mammut-Buch der Technik, 114-115, 117 (helicopters).

The piggies read this while J demonstrated with his model helicopter. 

We continue to call helicopters "Pupsräuber."

Age 5.3.3

Roadtrip reading & listening

Roadtrip Dec. 26, 2014 - Jan. 1, 2015

Reading: Roger Hargreaves, Miss Schüchtern, Mister Faul, and Miss Neugierig. David Macaulay, Das große Mammut-Buch der Technik, 10-11 (inclined planes), 12-13 (keys and locks), 14-15 (cutting machines), 16 (plow), 17 (zipper), 18-21 (levers); 26-27 (inside the piano); 36 (gears and belts); 54 (pulleys) 

Listening: Albert E. erklärt Freundschaft (46 min.); Ingo Siegner, Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss und die Reise zum Nordpol (46 min. twice) and Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss im Weltraum (53 min.); Benjamin Blümchen, Benjamin auf dem Mond (45 min.), Benjamin als Koch (34 min.), and Benjamin und die Murmeltiere (39 min.); Otfried Preußler, Der Räuber Hotzenplotz 1 (113 min.) , 2 (127 min.) and 3 (111 min.); Astrid Lindgren, Michel aus Lönneberga (137 min.)

The Lindgren stories are about a young rapscallion who plays a lot of tricks and pranks on the members of his household and village. Often it's unclear whether he actually intends mischief. I've been working on the vocabulary of intentionality a great deal with J lately, and discussing these stories (as well as the new year) was a good chance to reinforce that and introduce new words. 

un/absichtlich, (nicht) mit Absicht
gute/böse Absichten
in der Absicht
ohne Absicht
(nicht) die Absicht haben, etwas zu tun 
etwas beabsichtigen
unbeabsichtigt

(nicht) vorsätzlich, (nicht) mit Vorsatz
den Vorsatz haben, etwas zu tun
mit guten Vorsätzen

versehentlich, aus Versehen

un/gewollt

Total listening: 13:17
Total yearly listening: 5:34
Age 5.3.1

Puppetry today 6

Today Ulli—who, being a friend of Remy, knows a lot about cooking—helped us out with noodle making.

Sabine pitched in to help J with the cranking:

In addition to some good practice for J in talking about some basic mechanical operations, this was a chance for me to practice a couple of words whose gender I frequently screw up:

der die Kurbel
der die Klammer

Media today 34

Listening: Albert E. erklärt unsere Sonne, 21:50-38:30. 

Viewing: Urmel, episodes 3 (23:13) and 4 (23:30). 

At min. 28:00 in the Albert E. audiobook there was a pun that J wanted to hear several times: "Obwohl Sauerstoff Sauerstoff heißt, sind wir gar nicht sauer, wenn wir Sauerstoff einatmen." He also interrupted at one point to give an account of how the tides work: "Am Montag kommt der ganze Mond heraus und zieht die Wellen hoch."  

The last time J watched some of the Urmel show was about a year and two months ago. He didn't get into it; it was too linguistically challenging and fast-paced for him at that point. Now, he actually requested it this morning, and while watching he would call out commentary and make comparisons to the book. Progress!

Age 5.1.20

Literary-critical Sunday school, part 6

Reading: The Beginner's Bible, p. 397-426.

Listening: Margot Käßmann, Die Bibel für Kinder, part 2, 21:41-28:15; Karlheinz Koinegg, Moses und die Wüste der Wunder, 0:00-18:41.  

When in the Käßmann audiobook we came to the parable of the sheep and the goats and Jesus said "When the end of the world comes ...", J called out "There is no end of the world!" 

I paused and asked him what he meant, and he said that maybe there would be an end of the world but that it would not come for a long long time, and then he said something about outer space that I can't recall (and that he is now unwilling to repeat). When I told him that many religious people believe the end of the world is coming very soon, he said "Ja, es gibt viele Plappermäuler"  ("Yes, there are a lot of blabbermouths"). 

I also told him that you can see billboards people have put up saying that the end of the world and/or Jesus is coming soon, and that I would show him the next time we drove to Atlanta.  

Billboard on Route 316 in Gwinnett County

Our basic approach to talking to J about things like the end of the world (and evolution) is the following. We told him what most of the scientists say and that we agree with the scientists. We also told him that some, but not all, religious people disagree with the scientists and think that the world will end soon. I pointed out that Jesus and his disciples thought that that the world was going to end soon, and that was 2000 years ago. I also told him that when I was a boy, some religious friends and family members told me that the world was going to end soon, and that was 30-40 years ago. That I myself believed this for awhile when I was young. 

We do not simply tell J that the scientists are right and that the religious people are wrong. We try to give him a dispassionate account of the positions, and also represent their complexity, for example that a religious person can agree with the science and that many good scientists believe in God. But we also leave him in no doubt about the fact that we agree with the scientists on scientific questions. 

The story of Moses is one of J's favorites and he has already experienced many versions of it. He especially likes the episodes with baby Moses in the basket, the burning bush, and the two scenes with the "snake staff" (Schlangenstab). He thinks some of the ten plagues are pretty interesting, but on the whole he doesn't really enjoy this part of the story. Concerning the last of the plagues (death of the first-born sons) he said last year: "Daddy, I don't think the scribes got this one right." 

In the past J has really enjoyed the German version of the movie The Ten Commandmants (2007), not least because here Moses has a donkey that gets a good bit of screen time. 

One of J's favorite scenes is where Moses, helping Zipporah at the well, tells the mean shepherds that they don't want to mix it up with him because he has nothing to lose and also because "my donkey is in a very bad mood today," and you see the glowering donkey shaking his mane and whinnying threateningly (min. 19:00).

I also made a point of telling J that even though you don't hear a lot about Moses's sister Miriam in the bible, she's really a very important person because she thought up the whole plan with the basket and Pharaoh's daughter. 

That if it were not for her, Moses would not have survived. That she has a story of her own and that it's a shame the writers of the bible didn't tell us more about her.

Age 5.1.18

Media today 31

Reading: David Macaulay, Das große Mammut-Buch der Technik, p. 32-33 (water wheels and turbines); Roger Hargreaves, Mister Weihnachten and Miss Weihnachten. 

I read about water wheels and turbines to J and the piggies while J was taking a bath and playing with this toy:

J really liked these Hargreaves stories because, besides being Christmas-themed, they each featured numerous characters from the other books doing their typical schticks. When Mister Wirrkopf accidentally labeled his gifts with "Happy Easter," J laughed so hard he just about fell off the bed.

Listening: Roald Dahl, Sophiechen und der Riese, 2:53-3:13. 

This section had a funny sentence from the BFG J wanted to hear several times: "Was ist denn das für ein Wickel-Wackel-Klipper-Klapper-Stuhl? Ich sitze wie ein Floh auf dem Klo im Büro hier oben!"

Age 5.1.17

Media today 27

Max Kruse, Urmel aus dem Eis, ch. 9-10. Also, this arrived in the mail today:

Which is the German translation of 

The texts are still somewhat beyond his level in both languages, but he can understand some of it, and he loves looking at the pictures and diagrams. For me it's great to have German technical explanations and vocabulary all in one place instead of having to look everything up on Wikipedia—though Wikipedia is still great.

This evening we read about inclined planes (pp. 10-11) as well as can openers and scissors (pp. 14-15). 

Viewing: Let's play Kung Fu Panda (Deutsch), episode 3. J loves this episode most of all because it shows the Furious Five each doing their characteristic training regimens. Today he announced that Viper is his favorite "because she trains in the fire chamber." 

Age 5.1.11

Media today 11

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   

Audiobooks and Hörspiele

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of audiobooks for my son's L2 development. Since I am not a native speaker of the L2 and learned it in an academic context, my own L2 production was initially deficient with regard to the linguistic strata associated with childhood: specific idioms and euphemisms of all kinds, especially for bodily experiences and activities; language of concrete physical description, especially of how simple devices work; onomatopoeic words; animal sounds, etc. 

German children's audiobooks made up for these deficiencies for my son and simultaneously taught me a great deal. Furthermore, audio materials, especially multicharacter Hörspiele, allow for regular exposure to a wide variety of different voice types, regional accents, and modes of oral speech, as well as to imitations of everyday communicative phenomena like mutiple people speaking at the same time, interruptions, voices from a distance, etc. 

  
My son has been listening to audiobooks ever since he began German at age 2.2. For the past two years, between ages 2.8 and 4.11, he has been listening about 90 minutes per week. At the time I am writing this, he has done about 250-300 hours of listening to about 70 audiobooks and Hörspiele in the three years he has been learning German. 

There is a major logistical qualification. I have found only one way to get my son to engage in sustained and concentrated listening: in the car, while strapped into his seat. All those hundreds of hours were logged on the road. In fact, much of this driving was for no other purpose than for listening to audiobooks. 

I avoid busy roads and traffic, either cruising very slowly around local neighborhoods (usually in the very early morning) or else out in the country. Fortunately, we live in a small town within easy reach of hundreds of miles of rural roads. If we lived in or near a big city and had difficulty escaping urban or suburban traffic conditions, I would not undertake the risk of so much unnecessary driving. As it is, I only feel guilty about increasing my carbon footprint. 

Chandler Bridge Road, 7 min. from my house

Weekly listening routine. Once per week we take long drive in the country, listening for 45 minutes to an hour. On two other weekdays, we get in 10-20 minutes of listening before I drop Jamie off at school or his grandmother's. The weekend is usually good for another chunk of 15-30 minutes. Then there are scattered bits of time here and there in the afternoon as we run errands or whatever. On longer drives or vacation roadtrips, Jamie will sometimes listen for several hours at a time. 

Technology and method. I get all our German audiobooks and Hörspiele from Audible.de, downloading them via the Audible app directly onto an Ipod touch (a smartphone would work just as well), which plugs into an Ipod jack on a cord into the car stereo. While driving slowly in a residential area or on a country road with no traffic, I have my Ipod in my right palm with my thumb hovering over the icon that makes the recording skip back ten seconds. This is because Jamie likes to hear favorite bits over and over again, a desire I encourage and indulge, since repetition is pure language-learning gold. The pause icon is right there too, which we make liberal use of in order to talk about the story as we are listening. 

(Classical guitarist fingernails!)

Repetition and discussion are a fundamental part of the experience, and the technology makes a difference here: skipping back and pausing is not as quick and easy with a CD player as it is with an Ipod. Nor is it as safe, since you need to take your eyes off the road for a split second. With a bit of practice, this is not necessary with an Ipod touch (or a smartphone) using the Audible app. 

Again, let me make safety issues clear: Only on residential streets and backroads do I do the Ipod-in-the-palm thing. If we're listening while running errands in suburban traffic, there are no pauses or playbacks until we are parked somewhere. 

Primary materials. So far I have placed the greatest emphasis on stories I first read out loud to Jamie from books or e-reader. So the audibook is already a repetition. Our listening tracks our reading very closely; usually same or next day, and we listen only as far as we have read. I do this for three main reasons. First, I like to prioritize the written medium and the intimacy of reading out loud together as the primary literary experience. Secondly, I can make sure Jamie already understands everything before the listening begins, from plot points down to important words and phrases. Thirdly, since the audiobook or Hörspiel generally represents a performative enhancement of what I am capable (with great character voices by professional narrators and actors, catchy songs and soundtracks, cool sound effects), Jamie is less interested in reading a book together that we have first experienced as an audiobook.

For the first two years, the listening was dominated by four main groups of stories:

1) Nine Hörspiele based on Hans de Beer's Der kleine Eisbär (from 2.2-3.5 years)

2) Sixteen audiobooks from Ingo Siegner's Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss (from 3.6-4.3 years)

3) Fairy tales by the Grimms (2.5-years-present). 

4) Bible stories (3.10 years-present)

Beginning at age 4.8, the focus has shifted to longer chapter books. We have been working our way through Otfried Preußler's stories (so far Der Räuber Hotzenplotz 1, 2, and 3; Das kleine Gespenst, and Die kleine Hexe) and German audio productions of Roald Dahl's Charlie und die Schokoladenfabrik and Sophiechen und der Riese. In the case of the latter, Jamie first reads the stories with my wife in the original English. 

Other great serials we have dipped into for which great audio productions are avaliable include the Findus und Petterson tales by Sven Nordquist, Max Kruse's Urmel stories, and the endless Benjamin Blümchen Hörspiele. There are dozens more we have not listened to. 

Secondary materials. There is also a massive amount of high-quality German children's non-fiction to be had in audio production. The Random House/cbj audio series "Ich weiß was" is fabulous, covering most areas of basic knowledge in a very entertaining manner. The science and philosophy-oriented Hörspiele by the German astronomer Harald Lesch are truly stellar, managing to broach deep existential and ethical questions in a manner understandable and entertaining for a four-year-old. 

\

We usually listen to these sorts of things in shorter snippets, since as not-fiction they do not hold Jamie's attention for very long. We have also listened to a good deal of poetry and mythology. 

Tie-ins to visual media. The more media through which a child can experience a story, the better for language-learning purposes. This factor also partly guides my choice of what we listen to. Of the above materials, many are available as films, television shows, or plays, either free via YouTube or at sites like Kinderkino.de.

In my experience, however, it is best to wait until one has read the book and listened to the audiobook before getting to the visual media. I have found that once J has seen the movie or show, he is less interested in a repeated reading of or listening to the story.