In order to help the kids continue to immerse themselves in German, I pull them out of their regular school about one day every week (or once every other week) and home school them in German. Like I've mentioned before, my kids' primary language is slowly switching from German to English. This is inevitable, since we live in the United States, my husband and I are native English speakers, all their friends speak English, and they attend an English-speaking public school. So, naturally, their primary language will eventually be Englsih. In fact, I am quite surprised at how long we were able to keep German as their primary language! They only started increasingly speaking English at home in the past 9 months! It is not my intention to "fight" the English that is creeping into our home, but merely to continue to encourage as much German as possible. I want to give them opportunities where it feels comfortable and natural to speak German (our target language). Our pseudo-German-home-school is one of those opportunities. As we work on German work sheets and read German books, the kids naturally start speaking mostly in German to each other.
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25 March 2017
Encouraging Target Language Use Through Our German Home School Days!
In order to help the kids continue to immerse themselves in German, I pull them out of their regular school about one day every week (or once every other week) and home school them in German. Like I've mentioned before, my kids' primary language is slowly switching from German to English. This is inevitable, since we live in the United States, my husband and I are native English speakers, all their friends speak English, and they attend an English-speaking public school. So, naturally, their primary language will eventually be Englsih. In fact, I am quite surprised at how long we were able to keep German as their primary language! They only started increasingly speaking English at home in the past 9 months! It is not my intention to "fight" the English that is creeping into our home, but merely to continue to encourage as much German as possible. I want to give them opportunities where it feels comfortable and natural to speak German (our target language). Our pseudo-German-home-school is one of those opportunities. As we work on German work sheets and read German books, the kids naturally start speaking mostly in German to each other.