Bilingual Familes – Bedtime Stories

A few of you will now that we are a “Bilingual Family” – I am half Austrian and my better half is British. So the kids speak English and understand German.

That really pains me to write. I would love for them to SPEAK German too. But as many biligual families will tell you it is a struggle (or at least I hope they say that, else I am a complete and utter failure).

It all started off so well. I found some fellow German mums and we had regular German playdates. It helped ME above all to “Get back into German” (English has been my dominant language for a long time). And I was doing well. German with the Kids. English when the English speakers were around.

And then somewhere I lost my way. And we spoke more and more English. Argh.

We have an upcoming “interview” at the local(ish) German School coming. And really, I am beginning to worry about it. The kids do understand a lot, and the Boy (almost 6) is starting to try and use some German more and more. But it is very basic. So I am making an effort.

And my main effort right now ist to increase the understanding and use of vocabulary.

The focus will be on our bedtime reading books – out with the English books, in with the German Books. Reading and bedtime stories are a great opportunity to introduce more complex gramma and vocabulary not in every day use.

I am going to start with some of the books from my childhood:

Yesterday we started with Suchen Und Finden

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Great for increasing vocabulary as you seek out the words highlighted in the “frame of the page”.

We also started on a Chapter Book “Das Kleine Gespenst

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But it amde me realise, quite how behind we are in our vocabulary. But we battle on.

And I have some great books about a little girl called Arnie, who lives on a light house island off the coast of Australia…

71Sc+mWIOKL._SL500_It is text heavy, but also has a good amount of pictures, so I think this will help us on our German Book Bedtime reading.

Wish us luck!

 

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