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.

Vorteile / Nachteile

In our conversation yesterday J correctly used these concepts ("advantages" / "disadvantages") in his own conversation for the first time. I've been actively seeding them for about a year and a half (here and here). 

We were discussing the various strengths and weaknesses of various World of Warcraft classes.

Sunday school 23: Moses 1

Listening: Die Bibel, 4.23 - 4:42 (Exodus ch. 1-4).

In our discussion of this section, I tried to connect the predicament of the Israelites in Egypt with the modern refugee crisis, contrasting the "good" pharao of the Joseph story, who welcomed immigrants, with the "bad" pharao of the Moses story, who oppressed them.  

2016
Total audio: 29.14
Total video: 25:25
Total gamplay: 5.40
Age 6.09.31