Germany is on...as soon as we find a place to live.

[MummyPig24]

Dh has been working one week in Germany, one week in the UK since June. His employment here ends Oct 31st and he will be working in Germany Mon-Thurs every week until we find accommodation for us all.

We are excited and nervous. I'm most worried about my eldest child. He's currently in year 3, very bright but very anxious. We are planning on putting him in the local German school. Is this horribly mean? Will he find the work too hard given it is in another language? Dd is 5 and will go to kindergarten, ds2 is 19 months and will be at home with me. I do feel like the best way to get them integrated and learning the language is to throw them in at the deep end. They know some very basic German. But I am so worried they will be unhappy.

I hear school is 8am-1pm. Does this include lunch? What kind of after school activities are available?

We are planning on selling our car and not having one for a while seeing as Dh will be able to walk or cycle to work and I can't drive anyway. Is this stupid? Good bus and train links in the town we will be living.

I just feel so naive!

I can't help with the German specifics of your post, but we have just moved from the UK to the middle East with our Y2 and YR kids.
We have chosen an international school, where the majority of the teaching is in English, however they are still being taught Arabic and Islamic studies most days. The change has been fine for them. As they start school slightly older, there a big a slight step back in what they are being taught, making it slightly easier to adjust. There have been no problems, yet. We are on week 2.

School seems to be similar hours. We are asked to send a healthy snack, so I send in fruit and sandwiches. This keeps them going to not need lunch when they get home.

We have a car, and its very useful for food shopping, and also IKEA trips to get the house set up. But taxis exist! And so do feet, tho very few people walk here, its above 40C ATM.

Good luck with the move, the benifit of being back together as a family has been emense, although we couldn't do one week away one week home. It was 3 months with one visit.

Treat it as a great opportunity for the whole family, and see where your adventure takes you.

How old is your eldest child? They start school later in Germany -age 6 or sometimes 7. If he is generally a quick learner and gets extra tuition for German then he may struggle for a few months but would probably pick the language up quickly enough. If you fail a year at school in Germany, you have to repeat it. However, primary school is not too taxing in the first few years.
Schooltine does not include lunch but a few breaks. After school activities tend to be independent from school life and organised by clubs - there are plenty of spo rts clubs available. If your child is musical, secondary schools usually offer choirs and orchestras. This is rarely the case in junior schools.
I wouldn't worry about not having a car - you can always change your mind if need be.
Children learn languages very quickly when they have to - if your children are outgoing , I'm sure they will make friends quickly. Everybody loves to try out their English in Germany so communication is no real problem.

You need to say which state for really relevant advice.

My 8 year old goes to school 8-11.20am two days a week, 8-2.15 two days a week, and 8-1pm one day a week - you don't know what hours will be on what days until you get the time table. There are no meals but a 20 minute break at 9.30-9.50 and another at 11.20 (on the 3 days a week he doesn't finish at 11.20).

Our school has a lunch / afternoon club available Monday - Thursday - if you want your child to stay til 2pm they can have a cooked lunch or eat a packed lunch you send - that would cost €50 a month plus €5 for every lunch, or they can stay until anytime between 3 and 4pm latest, and do homework from 2-3 then have free play time with childcare, for €50 per month for one day a week or €90 for 2-4 days, plus €5 per cooked lunch.

Without German it will be a struggle - they may recommend he goes back a year. Loads of kids stay back a year for no special reason and actually old for year kids do best usually - more likely to go to grammar school if that means anything - so no harm in it. An American girl started our rural village school without German and only lasted a couple of months - the other kids liked her and wanted to play with her, and DD (the only other English speaker at the time in the school - we are still the only English speaking family) talked to her once other kids came to find her and introduce them but the school didn't even think of pairing them up or telling the poor American girl there was an English speaker higher up the school and it was a bit late - she'd been there without anyone to speak English to for 6 weeks or so by then! The school didn't do anything at all to help her, just let her join the class and sink or swim... and she sunk! Don't know where she went but a private school I expect, or perhaps the family moved - we found out about her too late to be any help!

If you're in a city which is used to immigrants/ ex pats though you will get more help - officially there are programmes and I'm sure our school would have been supposed to put something in place and would have eventually, they are just clueless about anything other than bog standard German kids :o So look into what schools are used to and able to cater for if you can. It can be hard to look around a Grundschule because you automatically go to your local one, so there is no looking around and reading OFSTED reports and agonising over which one to apply for - you have no choice. However you should be able to get an apt with the to talk about what they can offer your DS to help him learn German - even better would be to talk to other non German parents of course.

*8 - 12.15 not 2.15. Latest finish is 1pm once a week.

Forgot to say my experience of Kindergarten is that it is great... but I've only used one (for the last 7 years non stop, one child after another :o ) Your 5 year old may be better doing 2 years at Kidergarten to start school with really good German rather than starting school in September 2016, but whether that is possible depends on her birthday. Where we are about 1/3 of each school class have been kept back, and often they are the kids who end up at grammar school so it does them no harm!

Thanks everyone. My eldest is turning 8 at the end of the month. He is popular and sporty and doing well academically but he worries about change and his self confidence isn't great. But he is keen to try his German both at home and when we visited dh out there. Dd will turn 6 in March 2016 so she should have done 7 months in Kindi before starting school. I think we will see how we go with her.

We are going to be living near Dortmund, so Nord Rhine Westfalen. Iliked, what does your child do after school when it finishes so early? Do they do any other activities?

MummyPig he comes home on the school bus, chills out til his big sister gets home from secondary school (she finishes at 12.15 4 days a week but has afternoon school once a week as she's in a music program) and I've fetched his little brother from Kindergarten. We all eat lunch together at 1pm, then the older 2 do homework.

Primary school homework should only take an hour (every day though) - we had some problems when DD was in the early years of primary because she was being a perfectionist but working very slowly, and would bring a lot of class work home to finish on top of homework (all kids are expected to work at the same pace at primary, though that is changing a bit with the more forward looking teachers... and Bavaria is the most old fashioned state apparently so others may have embraced differentiation!). She was spending 3 or more hours on homework at age 6 and 7 til I finally came to an agreement with her teacher that she'd stop after an hour whether finished or not!

After homework they play out - we are lucky to be in a tiny rural village with the village playground and village green close by - 8 year old is also allowed to ride his bike to the next village with friends to the play park there (brilliant cycle path network several meters from the road, separated by a wide grass verge) and all the village kids play out. Generally he plays football or rides his bike between about 3pm and 5pm.

8 yo DS1 is football mad and trains 3 times a week from 5.30-7pm, he tends to have a match once a week on top - sometimes Saturday morning (younger kids have Saturday morning matches because the teens and adults play on the same pitches in the afternoon - be prepared for early Saturday starts if your DS is into football!) matches are also sometimes Friday evening. He also does Taekwando once a week - also a 5pm start unfortunately (I wish activities could be earlier in the afternoon, but most things are run by volunteers after work or as a second job - Taekwando isn't cheap but still his teacher (Sensei?) is actually a school teacher in the day :o DS wants to learn guitar too, but atm I think he has too much on. Have promised he can take a VHS course next year to try it (VHS is worth looking into - loads of free courses of all sorts for kids and adults - German classes too, I'm about to leave to go to my VHS German class, and this evening I'll be teaching a VHS English as a foreign language class :o )

Every reasonably sized village has a sports Verein and towns have several - they're cheap as chips to join (though you'll be expected to muck in somewhat baking cakes and staffing refreshment stalls, and sometimes collecting used paper etc. as fund raisers) and usually offer several sports, but football is the big one. Brilliant way to make friends esp with limited German, as your DS is sporty he'll fit right in!

*VHS courses are not free - very cheap for what they are, compared to any private alternative though. Not sure why I wrote free! An example would be DD is doing a sewing (machine) course for €37 plus material costs - that's 5 two hour lessons in a group of 5 older children. We tried Taekwando initially as a VHS course for €40 for 8 weeks of lessons - once the VHS course was over and the kids wanted to continue the non VHS cost is €40 per month (and joining fees though they were waived for kids who'd done the VHS course). Music lessons are about 1/3 of the price via VHS though they are group lessons - good as tasters though.

Reading with much interest, as my husband after 8 months of unemployment has just been offered a job in Leverkusen. My son is starting school in three weeks here in the Netherlands, it looks like it could be two or three years before he starts school in Germany if he has to wait until until he is six.

Thanks for all the info! Ds1 is very into football and I know the town we are moving to has a sports centre so that's great that he will be able to pursue that interest.

Dh's colleague says their state is very welcoming and always changing as it is quite an industrial area. That's good news for us! Oh I'm so nervous. I just have to keep telling myself that it will be an adventure and a great advantage for my children to be bilingual.

We spent a few months last year not far from Dortmund and my then 7 year old went to the local school and adored it. In your case I would put your ds into his age appropriate class for Germany e.g. my dd would have started yr3 last Sept but went into 2. Klasse in Germany. It meant that technically she was ahead academically, but as she had a little catching up to do on her German spelling and grammar, she fitted right in and was also the same age as her classmates. And because she wasn't struggling academically she also had huge fun.

What I'm saying is don't be tempted to put him into 3.Klasse only because he is yr3 in the UK. In 3. Klasse he would be one of the very youngest (with some children just turned 10 potentially) and the pressure is on to get children ready for senior school (after 4. Klasse).

In my mind children there have so much more freedom and independence. Dd walked to school and back herself, started at 8 am but was finished by 12.15 at the latest, and then spend all afternoon playing with friends, cycling, swimming etc. She loved being home for lunch and didn't even mind the homework (quite a lot). She still hasn't forgiven me for us coming back to the UK...

Good luck

Thank you Fairlity, we are planning to do as you said and put ds1 into his age appropriate class. He is one of the oldest in the year here so I think it is best he goes into 2 klasse. I really hope the dcs love it!

Your dd with a March birthday will probably be ready to go into 1. Klasse next year. They start them quite gently . I found my 5 year old dd2 was bored in Kindergarten last year (nasty mummy cheated her out of Reception in the UK). It depends on the Kindergarten but the one she went to taught absolutely nothing at all and she got fed up with gluing and drawing after a few months...

I think you'll find the outdoorsy lifestyle will be a big bonus. We spent 5 weeks this summer over there and had the most amazing time in proper summer weather (pretty constant 27-36 degrees). Long cycle rides, days spent at the Freibad (outdoor pool), wonderful playgrounds with white sand, amazing Italian ice cream..
The dc are now already singing German Christmas songs and planning on what they will buy at the Christmas market in December.

If someone offered me a job in Germany I'd go yesterday

It's so good to hear you had a positive experience there. I need to seek out these playgrounds, I didn't see any during the week we were there. I need a tour guide!

I lived in Dortmund for over 20 years so if you have any questions just ask.

Oh, amazing Ruhrpott! Do you know Kamen? That's where dh works and we will be living. I visited Dortmund a few times when we joined him in the summer, went into town and the zoo. What else is good to see and do? Oh and we went to the stadium.

Sorry, the only thing I know about Kamen is that is where we used to go to IKEA before they built one in Dortmund. We also got our log burner from just next to the ikea. We lived just near the zoo in Dortmund.
I know there is a British sailing club at the Mohnesee. In Dortmund there is lots to do and see. The Xmas market is lovely with the biggest tree made up of thousands of little ones. The Westfalenpark playground is great for kids.
I couldn't speak any German when we moved there. I had German lessons at the Auslanderinstitut in Dortmund. My children were born there so learnt German before school.
If your husband has a job there you will all be insured on his health insurance. The health service is great.

Photos of the tree last year. We still go back a lot!

Immobilienscout24.de is a good place to look for flats/ houses. A lot of Germans rent flats and they are much more secure tenancies than in the uk.

www.immobilienscout24.de/m/search/resultList/region?searchBox=Kamen&locateMeSuccessful=false&realestatetype=apartmentrent&price.min=0&price.max=0&numberofrooms.min=0&numberofrooms.max=0&livingspace.min=0&livingspace.max=0&haspromotion=&constructionyear.min=0&constructionyear.max=0&geoHierarchy.region=&geoHierarchy.city=Unna%2520%28Kreis%29&geoHierarchy.district=Kamen&geocoordinates=&geocodes=1276010050005&geoLocationType=quarterOrTown&sType=region&gacId=1276010050005&pagenumber=1&address=Kamen&hitCount=73

Oh and most Germans take their kitchen with them when they move

Yes to taking kitchens with you although I found more people have now seen sense and leave it where it is/ expect a kitchen when they move... To me it's the same as taking your bath and toilet with you - no one would do that, would they

For finding somewhere to live, ask your dh to tell everyone he knows to keep an eye out. Maybe his company can help, too. One of the things I found a little infuriating last years was that many things still work by word of mouth and who you know. Which is most unfair if you are trying to find your feet in a new area. It extends to jobs, flats, houses, even in my case a Kindergarten place! If you can get a flat though connections you'd save the extortionate agent fee, too. As Ruhrpott has mentioned, tenancies are much more secure and people do often rent for long periods of time, which makes finding something less easy because the turnover is so low. (I'm not suggesting following old ladies home to see where they live and waiting for them to die... but those were pretty much the only new properties on the market while I was there last year).

I don't know anything about that area or schools (my DD has hustled kindergarten) but just wanted to say that you shouldn't have to pay the awfully high agent fee when looking for a rental property now, the law recently changed and now that cost is usually covered by the landlord. You will still quite a bit upfront though as a deposit is generally 3 months cold rent and of course your first month rent.

If you're on Facebook you could search for an expat Dortmund page, I'm in one for Frankfurt and there's always people advertising flats and things they are selling when they move on. Also good local info on settling in, schools, doctors etc.

Good luck, I'm sure you'll live it. Germany is a great place to bring up kids.

*my DD has just started kindergarten
And I'm sure you'll love it!

Dhs company are paying our deposit on a flat and buying us a kitchen so we don't need to worry about that, except deciding on which kitchen we want!

Dh went to look at a few flats a couple of weeks ago but the best of the lot is no longer being advertised so I just keep checking immobilienscout.