German School at Home! An Update on our French and German part-time Home School Experiment.

 We're already a couple months into the school year and things are going great! I'm still so grateful to the kids' teachers at school. I'm so grateful that they are willing to support us as we pull the kids out of school one day each week to home school them in German and French.
At first the kids were a little reluctant to miss school, however, they now really look forward to our "German School" days. I love that the mornings are more relaxed--no lunches to make, no rushing through breakfast, no worrying about finding matching clothes and homework assignments. We have a nice breakfast, clean up, and then, after our German family scripture time, we head up to our school room.
We usually start out the day by going over the calendar. After that, the kids write in their journals. We do some reading together and often I let two of them work on a worksheet while I do some one-on-one reading with each of them. We like to do some of the activities in our "Fibel" (primer). Then we spend some time doing worksheets. I use a German grade school curriculum which I really like. We're almost finished with the first grade year and I'm in the process of ordering the second grade curriculum. Sometimes, we play reading games (the curriculum came with some fun games). Of course, we always have lunch and recess. I love that I can send them outside to play and explore during recess. After that we come back in and work on French. It's amazing to see just how much they are learning in French. Sometimes, we have crafts or go on an outing. Some days, I also throw in some math or science...depending on how we're doing. Each day ends up being a little different. Some home school days are more productive than others, but for the most part, we get a lot done and enjoy our time together.
I spliced together some videos I've taken over the the past several weeks of our home school to kind of show how we roll:

Getting geared up for the new bilingual school year and wanting to be a more "deliberate" mom!

September arrived way too soon. I'm always so surprised at how quickly summer flies by. I always think I'll have the time to do summer school work with the kids, but it seldom works out. Between having all the kids home from school and all the summer activities and camps and the lack of a rigid schedule, I just don't seem to fit in any real school work. We mostly played, worked and had fun. We did, however, work a little bit on reading. Here's a little clip from some German summer reading:

The kids are now back in school and I'm getting ready to start our unique part-time home school program: see Part-Time Home Schooling Post  The biggest difference this year is that I will probably only be pulling the kids out of school once a week instead of twice a week, like I did last year. If I feel like I'm just not getting enough time with them, then I may pull them out twice on some weeks. We'll just see how it goes.

My three young kids are attending public school and are in first and second grade this year. They happen to have two of the best teachers in the world. Not only would my kids complain if I took them out of school too often (because they LOVE school), but I also don't want to disrupt their classroom learning too much. On the other hand, I'm anxious to see if we can keep up with our German reading and writing with only one day each week to work on it. I hope that even by exposing them to German reading and writing once a week, that their German literacy skills will continue to progress at grade level. I think that many of the skills they are learning at school (in English) will transfer to our German school work: see Learning to Read in Two Languages.
I am very excited to start our "German School." I love our home school days so much because I am a more "deliberate" mom on those days. I figure that if I'm taking my kids out of school, I'd better make sure that I am not wasting their time here at home. On our home school days, I make an extra effort to spend quality time with my kiddos: teaching, learning, playing, creating, reading, writing etc. We mostly focus on German reading, German writing (handwriting, spelling & journaling), and French. In addition, we usually spend time reading scriptures and teaching values, homemaking (cooking, cleaning, etc), music (piano), outdoor school (nature walks, etc.) and an occasional outing (museum). There's just so much we could do that I can't possibly fit it into one day!
I have spent today printing out our schedule, copying workbook pages, studying our French lesson and getting our "German school" area ready for Friday. I'm so excited about all the things that we will be learning together. I'm thrilled that they are learning to read and write in German and I'm happy that they are starting to learn French. But mostly, I'm just so excited to have my kids at home with me all day and to have this special, deliberate and quality time to connect with my precious little ones.

She's Hungarian!!! (I mean, she's German!) Bilingualism Blessing my (grown) Babies!

Today I got a very sweet postcard in the mail. It's from my 20 year old daughter, Michaela, who is currently serving an 18 month mission for our church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) in Germany. Link to Michaela's Mission Blog. She has been serving the people of Germany for almost a year now. She loves Germany and she loves the German people. Today's postcard is one of those letters that warms a mother's heart:

TRANSLATION:

Dear Mommy,

You are the best! I'm being completely honest. Mom, you are really the best. I could never say thank you enough that you spoke German to us. This special ability that I have--to speak German (which you gave to me)--has opened many doors and hearts. You never served a full-time mission, but you are serving next to me every day--because every word that I speak is a word that you taught me. I love you so much, but right now I don't want to be anywhere else but here. I cherish every moment here on my mission. "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (3 Ne 13:21). 

Today I had a funny/awesome experience. While we were on the train, I met an older lady. She was completely taken aback when I told her that I was an American. She was 100% sure that I was German AND she studied languages (she was a female version of Henry Higgens). After that encounter I had to laugh because I had that funny tune going around in my head from "My Fair Lady."  ..."She's Hungarian!"  You know? That point where Eliza passes her language test at the ball. Well, that's what I felt like today. 

From the bottom of my heart!

Your Michaela

My Fair Lady: "The Dreadful Hungarian"

First off, I have to say that I have not taught Michaela every word she knows...because I had to look up one of the expressions she used in her letter: "Ohrwurm im Kopf haben". I didn't know that meant to have a catchy tune stuck in one's head. But, what a gift that she is able to write the letter in German! This letter is precious to me. I am so happy that my grown children feel so grateful for the gift that we worked so hard to give them: the gift of a second language.  I am so touched by the fact that our efforts to raise our children bilingually have not only blessed the lives of our children, but also (through them) the lives of many others, as well! What a blessing! Once again, I am totally blown away by the unanticipated blessings we have received because of our decision to speak German to the kids. When we started this funny language experiment over 22 years ago, I never would have thought that it would have brought this much joy! What a wonderful journey this has been...with some amazing results and rewards!

Job Chart in Action

One of the things I LOVE about having two batches of kids, is that I don't have to reinvent the wheel for each phase of the kids' childhood. Now that the younger ones are old enough to really help with chores, I don't have to try and come up with a whole new system. I already did all that work the first time around.  I actually did a lot of cool things with my older batch that I'm able to use with the younger ones. For example, I spent a lot of time developing a great job chart that I used for many years with my older kids. How fun to pull it back out this summer and put it to good use!! All I had to do was change the names on the chart and update some of the chores. I LOVE my job chart. It has worked so well for us for so many years and I'm just tickled that I get to use it for many more years (one of the perks of having another batch of kids later in life)!!

For anyone interested in how it works, you can read about it HERE.

As you can see, it's a hodge-podge mixture of English and German--but it works for us. Each morning I pick all the jobs that need to be done that day. I sort of walk around the house and see what I'd like to have done. Then I lay the corresponding job tabs on the counter and have the kids pick which ones they want to do. Then they hang them on the chart in the order that they prefer to do the jobs. Then, throughout the day, as they complete each job, they are able to turn over the corresponding tab. They know they can't go out to play until all the tabs are turned over. And I am able to easily track their progress. It's been a great system for us.

Below is a video of the kids using the chart. As you can see, the kids mostly speak German as they discuss what chores they are going to do. But, many of our words we use for our chores are English. For example, we've always used the English word "mud room"--probably because there just isn't a good word for mudroom in German. We also use "stair basket" instead of figuring out the German word (Treppenkorb?). I find that we often insert English words into our German conversations. It's just easy to do. I should probably try a little harder to come up with German versions and get them to switch to the German word...but honestly, I often just don't worry about it. The kids already speak way more German than I ever expected from them. I'm just tickled that they are still speaking mostly German as they go about their morning chores.