Teaching German

Early Learning Teaching Your Child - Signing, Speaking, Languages
21

Hi:

Here is a very nice site with songs and their text: (very good pronunciation and melody)
http://www.spiellieder.de/kinderlied-standards/kinderlied-standards.htm

Here a site with stories from the Grimm bothers just to hear:
http://www.vorleser.net/html/grimm.html

Good luck,

Maria Jose

22

Thanks and karma to you, Maria Hose, for the song website, it is usefull with all the texts available and the rythm of singing is quite slow so it is easy to follow the words.

23

Thanks to everybody for the great links! It is so helpful to have this kind of resources when you don’t speak the language. :yes:

We just started showing our daughter Muzzy in German. The graphics are not the best but we like the content menaing what they are teaching. We checked the program out from the library so we are going to try to renew it a couple of times take a break and borrow it again.

24

I found this website that may be a good tool to teach German and other languages. I just found it so I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to use it with my daughter.

http://www.livemocha.com

25

From the library my little ones enjoy this series of VHS videos (I think it comes in 10 different languages)… Bilingual Baby - German (very Doman-friendly and they like it over and over again)

http://www.amazon.ca/Bilingual-Baby-German/dp/B00004XPNY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1246420709&sr=8-1

Also from the library, look on the back of the kids movies… a few of them have German language tracks… I find the newer the movie, the more likely it will have multiple language tracks.

Also in the library, we have a section that has foreign language books… there are often one or two children’s books in that section… maybe you could find a German person to make a recording of the reading of the book (and ‘Tinkerbell’ could ring the bell to turn the page?), and you could photocopy the book (yes, I know, not strictly legal)… maybe even modifying your copy to include larger print size. (At our library, this foreign collection is rotated with other libraries from time to time, so I would personally not make a recording without somehow having my own copy of the material!)

I have only just thought of this idea, because I was talking with my husband (1st language German!) about speaking in German to our children (the little ones in particular)… and I said that if he is putting in the effort, then I will support him by finding all the resources I can to support German language learning in our house. (It is his 1st choice of foreign language to teach them… my 4th choice). I said I would find German story books too… but the thing is he very very rarely ever reads to them… bedtime stories is my department… but I can’t read or pronounce much German… so then I came up with this idea. Does it sound like a good one? Books are important I think for developing vocabulary that you wouldn’t normally use in everyday speech… in speech we say “the stone made a splash in the water”… in a book we read “the pebble sent ripples across the shimmering lake”. I love books!

26

momtomany,

Thank you for sharing! That video is sold by Brainy Baby. They are selling the VHS tape for 99c and the DVD for $7.99 for whoever want to buy it. I’m thinking about it. I have toa dmit I hadn’t thought about checking the library before buying it. The library in my town doesn’t have any of this products, so my mom has to get her in her city for me. That is why I don’t keep it in mind. :blush:

I got a little bit confused with your idea. What is your idea? :unsure:

27

My idea to help the kids learn German… (since I don’t speak German and my native speaking German husband is not in the habit to read them bedtime stories)…

Take a children’s German story book (or create one with larger words if your goal is to teach to read also), and make a recording of my husband reading the book in German… making a pause or a little bell sound or something so we know when to turn the page. Then, throughout the day or at bedtime, I can sit with the child(ren) and show them the book while we listen to Daddy reading the story to us. We can all learn German at the same time.

Also, because my Dutch understanding is about 75% for everyday conversation, I find that when he speaks in German to me then I understand a lot of what he says too (Dutch and German are closely related languages)… so maybe it would be okay if the language between us gradually became German. I’m not personally very motivated to learn German (like I posted, it’s my 4th choice of foreign language… after Dutch, French, Spanish) but I want to support my husband’s preference and it’s a good opportunity for the kids that we haven’t taken advantage of enough so far. (When DH’s parents were still alive, we visited just about every weekend, so at least the older 3 have been exposed to the sounds from an early age, especially the 15yo).

28

Dear All,
Here i came across this website…want to share with u all…contains german songs,stories,games etc…

http://www.ukgermanconnection.org/kids/?location_id=872

regards

29

Here is another a link I found of some catchy german songs…

http://www.genkienglish.net/learntospeakgerman/index.htm

30

Nice site! You are right the songs are very catchy. I love that they have a flash presentation of the phrases while you play the demo.

31

Thanks a lot! I’m going to have those songs in my head for life. :wink:

32

Does anyone know if the songs once you buy them are different from the Demo? Meaning if they are longer or the song is exactly what you hear in the demo.

33

I think momtomany has a lot of fantastic ideas (I never thought of simply photocopying books to enlarge the print size - that might work really well and be quite easy…copyrights??)

I guess everyone is already aware of

Rosetta Stone and

Pimsleur products -

I love

Michelle Thomas products

for adults or even perhaps more mature children. Does anyone know the name of the computer software for language learning that is supposedly much better than Rosetta Stone (comes with video)?? - someone on the forums mentioned it and I can’t find the name again -

Thanks so much (I hope this helps!)

34

I searched the site to see what language software you were referring to and I think it was “Tell Me More”. Sheeberi mentioned it in her reply under a post about Rosetta Stone. I checked out the demo and it looks good, but I am still not sure if I will do that or Rosetta Stone…decisions decisions :smiley: