Is there still a German Thread?

[BeatrixBurgund]

We've moved back to Germany after 8 years in Switzerland and Scotland, and with the kids in school, I just know I'm going to have lots of questions about the Bavarian education system.

And I'd love to catch up with all the folk I used to chat with (even if I can't remember their usernames!). I'm on a namechange - it's MmeLindor here!

Hi Hounds! We are in B-W too. If you're near karlsruhe I can introduce you to a great support group.

Hi Bertie! We're going to be near to Heidelberg.

Ah that's not too far away. :) Heidelberg is beautiful.

Everyone help, I am having a flappy English parent moment. Due to send DS (8) off for a week with total strangers so he can camp in a forest and get lots of Frische Luft, and we're supposed to send him with a knife. Logisch, oder? But, um, what is the protocol when you present your 8 year old with his first knife? Are we supposed to point out safety features and explain what not to do? I didn't own any knives as a child so I don't know. And I don't know if the holiday camp place are expecting us to have done some kind of preliminary safety training.

Bertie all my kids got this knife (in different colours/ patterns) in their Schultüte, it's the model (we were advised by the neighbors' whose dad is a Jäger)

www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00F66IYR4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Round end, still sharp, whittling is a thing here because where we live all there is is Frische Luft :o Yes, you explain the basic rules - which for us where never to walk around with it out of it's case and always to sit when using it and not to sit too close to anyone in case of taking someone's eye out Ralphie :o

Get one with a round end and tell him not to walk around with it out of its case/ sheath, it'll be fine

Buy the sheath/ case thing separately - if you click on the knife the sheath is a suggested thing to buy with it I think.

Oh that's interesting, thanks. I was looking at swiss army type things on amazon but I think I'm going to go into the local family-run knife shop and ask their advice. I was a bit alarmed by the idea of a knife which is always a knife but with a sheath it doesn't sound too bad.

Just having visions of him trying to bottle flip with it or something...

Usefully, I recently managed to cut through my tendon and nerve with a Fruhstucksmesser, so I shall instruct him to look very carefully at my mangled finger before he goes

Hi vinyard, I've been lurking but also just moved to Cologne. Sadly my eldest is only 5 though.

Vineyard although of course I'm sure you'll find English speaking friends in a city and no reason not to, I just wanted to add that your DD doesn't need them to keep the language if you speak English as a family language.

My older two are indistinguishable from native speakers (youngest blends in seamlessly in the UK until somebody talks to him about a topic he associates with German, when he sometimes drops subject specific words in in German, complete with German pronunciation - he'd sound terribly cultured perhaps if it were French, but dropping in the names of types of snake in German into unaccented English sentences during a conversation at a petting zoo got him some double takes and a small boy suggesting he was an alien on a recent visit to the UK :o )

We gave up on the ex pat thing years ago, and all the kids' friends are German, but as long as we keep English as a family language and read bedtime stories (despite kids ages they still enjoy being read to in English and watch TV and listen to English audio books while falling asleep and set consoles and devices to English-- the children's English hasn't suffered at all - we moved ten years ago when one was a toddler, and the younger two were born here.

My DS is in a fully German school. We only speak English at home as both DH and I are English.

The only issue with his English is that he tends to use German structures in English (For example: "Yesterday I was by Maxim" or "Have you already this morning eaten breakfast?") although this isn't very noticeable, and he hasn't yet learned to say the English sounding th and I'm a little concerned that he won't ever learn it now, but I don't think he has a German accent. His English accent has become more nongeographical though. I really notice in old videos of him or when visiting home that friends' kids have an accent whereas I never noticed it when we live there. So perhaps he does speak with a German accent but I can't hear it. People say he does but then reference the fact he says "duh" for "the" and "fing" for "thing", which isn't really German at all, it's more the way young children pronounce th. Germans tend to go into "zuh" or "sing", which he doesn't do.

I have friends who are fully English at home and decided to do the bilingual school thing in case they ever moved back home (as it's in line with the UK curriculum) and their children's German has suffered for it as they don't use it as much. I feel like the home/school split is a really good setup if you're monolingual at home whereas the bilingual school thing perhaps works better when you have two languages at home? I don't know.

Vineyard we've only ever used German kindergartens and schools.

My eldest was a toddler when we moved, did 3 years of German Kindergarten and is about to start her 7th year of German school. When she started secondary (which was year 5) she had a classmate with an American mother for the first time, but the other girl won't speak English to her own mother let alone to DD, and they don't get on they won't be in the same class together. DD speaks English to a girl on the school bus who goes to the next door school sometimes - German parents but brought up in Singapore til she was 8... but otherwise no English speaking contact at school.

English lessons are always a bit of a bone of contention because they are boring and sometimes the teachers get things wrong... However DS1 cannot spell in English so does benefit from English lessons purely because he has to learn lists of spellings - for some reason DD is a natural speller so I would have liked her to be able to choose a different first foreign language, so far she's learnt nothing in English lessons, but the automatic 1 (A) is useful to balance maths, which she sometimes struggles with

My older two sound like slightly posh northern English children when they talk (northern vowels, but no dialect or specific accent). Neither have problems with th or grammar. My youngest has the issues Bertie mentions though - which makes Ds1 cross, and he always corrects him I can't make up my mind how much correcting to do.

I am fairly sure my youngest's English has more quirks because we tipped the balance too far in favour of German, mainly because I returned to work so he did far longer Kindergarten hours, but also because the house has become less a protected English bubble with two older siblings whose monolingual German friends are in and out all the time, and because my own German has got better! A parent who genuinely doesn't speak much German is probably the best way to ensure a child with perfect English! Strangely I made less effort to socialise DC3 in German before he started Kindergarten and the older two used to simultaneously translate for him, so he had the strong English foundation as a definite first language, and his first language development was totally normal as a toddler, but I think we probably tipped him too far into German from age 3, with full 8 hour Kindergarten days instead of the 8:30-12:30 the older two did.

Bei used in place of 12 or more different English pronouns is my biggest bugbear, like Bertie - I hate it! Mind you when we visit my family I hear my nephew and niece (both of whom only speak English) using local dialect and slang and I think I'd hate being called "Mooomay" (I have now idea how to transcribe the pronunciation they seem to use) instead of Mummy more than I hate "bei" all over the place :o - if you don't mix much with other English speakers you do get to control how your children speak English for far longer than if you live in your native country :o :o

That should be "they won't be in the same class together *next year"

I think the bilingual school is only necessary if you might eventually slide into speaking German at home.

If you will speak English at home I'd rate the community aspect of going to school with her neighborhood friends higher - where we live the few children sent to different secondary schools tend to fall out of the local friendship loop and become slight outsiders (but unlike primary there are kids sent to further away secondary schools for various reasons so it wouldn't be that weird...). There is one in our village who goes to a Catholic girls secondary, and one of DD's old class mates was sent to a private school a longish train ride away because she didn't get the grades for a school acceptable to her parents... but both have fallen out of the easy camaraderie the children who catch the same buses to school have. It seems not to matter, friendships outside school wise, whether kids went to Middle, Realschule or Gymnasium so much as whether they still get the same bus - the bus drops off at all 3 :o

All that might matter less in a city, but I imagine who you walk to school with will still be quite important socially.

Hello, I am really pleased to find this group. And so in awe of all of you for getting on and raising your kids in a foreign country. I am moving to hamburg in Feb 2018. My husband will be there sooner but I will move with my 4 kids in Feb.

Does anyone have any experience with kids with Autism? My boy is a level 2 ASD. He is verbal and gets one to one support at mainstream school. He is coming with us, I already had advice on another forum that the german school system fails kids with special needs and that I should put him in a boarding school!

Thanks for reading x

Welcome sap. Hope you have a lovely time, HH really is a beautiful city. More bridges than Venice, don'tcha know? Are you on Facebook? I can point you towards a number of groups for expats on Hamburg, which might be able to provide up to the minute answers to your questions.

I grew up in 'english speaking Hamburg' , and due to visit again in October. Any idea what part you will be in? Public transport system pretty good..

hi, thanks so much. I would love to know the Facebook groups. thanks

Hi Sap there is a poster who has children with Autism, but I haven't seen her on the thread recently.

My experience is that children with Autism who need extra support do tend to go to special schools here, but education is so different from state to state, and even to a lesser degree by area within a state, that I suspect you really need information from somebody in Hamburg specifically. A few children we know go to special schools who certainly would be in mainstream in the UK (it seems to happen a lot for speech and language delay even when quite moderate). The good thing is that the special schools seem to be better than the regular schools, with tiny class sizes and lots of support, parents are usually full of praise for the ones near us, and children are often re-integrated once able to cope in mainstream, at least around here.

Hi sap I'd suggest you start by asking to join

[expats in hamburg]

The intro to the group includes a group aimed at mothers, which i didn't join, because they keep it focussed on active parents, only. It might be a useful resource to find answered to your original question.

For nostalgic reasons, I also 'like' {sorry, turns out there are quite a few, here is a selection, enjoy!}

https://www.facebook.com/HamburgWelcomeCenter/

Local Newspaper
https://www.facebook.com/abendblatt/

Some pictures, look out for the characteristic roof colour, green of copper
https://www.facebook.com/luftbild.fotograf.de/

https://www.facebook.com/hamburgenglishpages/

The defining elements, church and river
https://www.facebook.com/michelundelbe/

The new, much maligned during protracted building works, Elbphi
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Elbenfilharmonien/1657921921107183?rf=1141189199286191

https://www.facebook.com/For-The-Love-Of-All-That-Is-German-And-Good-855478551233692/

https://www.facebook.com/Hamburg/

Lighthearted look at 'typical' things, capturing the local pronunciation
https://www.facebook.com/typisch.hamburch/

Thinking ahead, when you move on
https://www.facebook.com/TCKWorldwide/]]

Oh, and an Irish pub....near the new 'Elbphi,
https://www.facebook.com/fleetenkiekeririshpub/

Hi, I am so happy to find this thread.

We are likely to move to Munich in a few months with three kids, 6,4 and 1 and we currently live in London. We plan to send the kids to a grundschule.

I am a bit worried about how much support they offer to non german speakers and how well they include kids who don't speak german.

@TheHoundsofLove: When you found your place in BW, do you know if they provide support for non german speakers or are they just thrown in and expected to adapt ? Reading the older threads, with the gymnasium only 3y away makes me nervous...

Thanks !

Hi everyone, I posted this as a separate thread but i think this is the right place for it. if you have any experiences, it would be great to hear about them !

I was hoping if you could share your recent experiences of state schools in Munich or closeby. I have gone through a lot of threads on German Primary schools mostly from 2008 and earlier and it looks like they say the following:

1. The style of education is more old school with emphasis on homework, fitting in and kids with SEN seem to have it tougher than in London.
2. If you don't speak German as a 6y old, either they send you out of town to a school where they let you in or ask you to repeat a year in kindergarten to get your German up to speed.

I am hoping things have changed for the better in this regard esp with a number of refugees. One would expect they would work on including non german speaking kids in mainstream schools than send them out etc.

We are likely to move as my dh's job is being moved to Munich from London and with 3 kids, 6, 4 and 1, private school is not an option. And the relocation is not what one would describe as generous but we are open to trying something new - provided the kids stay happy, it should be a good move - they really love their current school/nursery in London.

Moving from Dalston, Munich feels like a fairly conservative place, perhaps not for Bavaria. :)

All the other bits, outdoors, safety, the mountains are all great and we are looking forward to that. But education is making me nervous and I would love to hear about recent experiences.

Please tell me they now offer good support for non native speakers while keeping them at school :)

Would love to hear back from you....

Hackney - There are a couple of other non-German speakers starting with him, so the school are going to give them intensive German catch-up until they feel his German is fluent enough to join the main class full-time. He will be with the whole class for some lessons (PE etc..) and break times though. We have been really impressed with how prepared the school is to integrate the non-German speakers.
I am still worried about how hard the first few months are going to be for him, but, it could end up being a permanent move for us and so total immersion seems to be the best option. He's been having some German tutoring over the summer - he's only learnt the basics, but it seems to have made him a lot more confident about the whole thing.

Hi Hackney! I can help a little, we moved to Munich 6 days ago!!

We have 3 kids, age 7,5 and 2, eldest DS would be second year of Grundschule and he has no German. The local school have asked us to bring him in a week before school starts to meet him and following this they will decide whether he goes to a Transition School, goes into second year or goes into first year which would give him the language help. He's summer born so if they did decide on holding him back a year he wouldn't be massively older than the rest of his class.

We are still trying to get a kindergarten place for DS2, we had to register on Kita finder but nothing has come up yet though our landlords know there may be a couple of places coming up so we will try

So far we've been unpacking but had a great day in the Alps today, boat ride on a lake so the kids seem to be liking it. Weather was good, had a huuuge thunderstorm the other night so was cooler today.

There are some other posters on this thread from Munich, I'm quite new but can certainly try to answer any questions you have :-)

The whole process has been very exciting, a little stressful but I'm feeling happy now we are here

Dear Schlobbob and Hounds of Love, it's great to hear back from you, that really is so useful.

Mumsnet really is amazing that way. Somehow finding that other people grapple with similar problems makes them seem less daunting :)

In terms of transition classes, is that what they refer to as Ubergangsklassen. So are we kind of restricted to those schools in effect ?

@Schlobbob, looks like our kids are exactly one year behind in age... We are likely to move closer to Christmas, assuming all the pieces fall into place, which they appear to be. I really hope they do well, but looks like you are off to a good start !
Did you pick the area first or the school first when you decided where you wanted to live ?

Another question we are grappling with is living in an apartment with 3 kids. Some of my dh's colleagues say noise is not really an issue as most people live with kids in apartments and kids are free to walk on the streets alone so gardens don't really matter as much etc. (Looks like you really have to move farther out for houses in Munich)
If you can share it, I am curious to know which areas you considered moving to in Munich before you picked yours.

I only have one child, but most of my friends here live in apartments, many of them have 2 or 3 or more kids. (Actually the three families I know with four do live in houses, okay). I really know a lot of 3-child families in apartments, it's very normal, and I don't find noise to be as much of a problem here as it was in the UK in terraced housing where the walls seem really thin.

We do have one grumpy neighbour but eventually worked out that it was our dishwasher that was coming over as really loud for her so since then, we stopped running it after 10pm ever and she seems much happier.