Durch die Strassen auf und nieder, leuchten die Laternen wieder... ***Herbstunterhaltung im Deutschem Eck***

[MmeLindt]

Durch die Strassen auf und nieder
leuchten die Laternen wieder:
rote, gelbe, grüne, blaue,
Lieber Martin, komm und schaue!

Wie die Blumen in dem Garten
blühn Laternen aller Arten:
rote, gelbe, grüne, blaue,
Lieber Martin, komm und schaue!

Und wir gehen lange Strecken
mit Laternen an den Stecken
rote, gelbe, grüne, blaue,
Lieber Martin, komm und schaue!

*

It is that time of the year again. Check your lanterns, get enough batteries, start the Bastelaktion.

I'm thinking the Erzieher might have the lice and they're passing it on.

Maybe you'd like to suggest that to them

oh ernest you are having the hardest time with all these nits!! dd only had them once and it scared me for life - they are persistent little buggers! i've no advice - sorry - just sending anti-nits thoughts!

zzzen - i'm so sorry about your friend - its such a tragic situation when they are so young.

Hupa - the mushrooms sound good but i'm the same as the rest - i've no idea which are the right ones and in my wilder younger days had magic mushroom soup and felt rotten for days so i'm always worried which ones are the toxic ones!

The kiga teacher met with us this morning just to say even though its nearly a year away she didnt think alexander would be ready for school next year - half of me agrees that it would be better for him to wait and be the oldest but the other half of me wonders how she knows this so far in advance!
the cut off date for Bayern is 30th Sept so he's just 2 weeks past it - if he'd had a sept birhtday he'd just have to go and get on with it (i think). he's so tall for his age (he's in 122-128 clothes) but also a really young 4 nearly 5 that i think i might just agree with the kiga no matter how much progress he makes in the next year and let him stay at kiga - its quite common here but want to speak to the other mothers of the kids he's friends with to see what they are thinking of doing.
Zzen - what is ENC?

ernest - first xmas in germany - really looking forward to having enough space for a huge xmas tree!
its already decided the IL's are coming here for a few days - they dont annoy me anywhere near as much as when we used to visit them from the UK - always easier when you dont have to stay in someone's house!

ENC = I meant English (well British) national curriculum

I mean if you have a view to moving at some stage, you might be thinking about slotting the dc back into the curriulum back home. But as I don't think you are planning to do that, it isn't relevant for you (was for us though IYSWIM)

Do you have to decide now canella? Would it be possible to register him for next year and then just withdraw if you feel he isn't ready or do you really have to decide now?

How good is his German, I think that might be a good criterium for making the decision?

we're here for ever zzen so not worried about the UK curriculum!

hard for me to assess his German cause he only ever speaks english to me! but dh thinks its improving every day!

dont need to decide now but wait for his U9 and a kiga assessment in the next few months. Not sure why the kiga teacher wanted to speak to us this week about it - its not urgent but now its on my mind!

they have to do compulsory language tests in kiga now (the Erzieher do it AFAIK), perhaps they have just done that to assess his German and that may be why they have spoken to you about school?

The thing is if he starts school aged nearly 7 learning to add and subtract to 10 which is year 1, if you were in the UK he would be in year 3 and doing numbers up to 1,000, multiplying and dividing. That's what I mean with being able to slot back in.

I don't think Geman schooling is somehow behind though. They catch up on all that but obviously in the first couple of years at school with the later start, they will naturally still be behind.

As you said, you needn't worry about that. I did see a documentary not long ago on year 4 in Bavaria which was kind of scarey and with that in mind, thinking Bayern is one of the more stringent states when it comes to testing and assessment in year 4, I might be inclined to wait.

Does he want to go to school?

maybe that was a particularly bonkers school but the docmentary followed a class throughout year 4 with the recommendation hanging over them like a sword. There were twin boys one of whom was clearly heading for the Gymnasium , the other was borderline and in fact didn't make it. Got the recommendation for Realschule. There was a girl who could learn ok but suffered from Prüfungsangst and didn't do well in the tests so she might not make it.Her mum sent her to yoga for children and tapped her on the head at night in bed with a kind of giant metal tongs, like you'd use for fishing chestnuts out of a fire. Don'tknow what that was about but apparently it didn't help, she was half a mark off the gymnasiale Empfehlung.

They asked the mothe what she thought of that. She was very quiet. She just said, you know if it was me, I would have given her the half a mark. So she went to a gymnasium for a trial week which invovled doing a whole loto f tests but she did not get high enough marks to stay there. She was top in German but apparently the maths was not good enough so she had to go to Realschule after all.

Quite a few strange Schicksale so if it might be a bit like that, I think the older they are when they are in year 4, the better perhaps.

that sounds scary - it seems like a mad system that kind of shapes your future with tests taken at the age of 10 or 11! am i right in thinking that only if they go to the gymnasium can they go to university?
dd only in 3rd class so not quite there yet! but she's only been back at school 4 weeks and had 4 different tests already!

with ds1 I think i'm thinking about the long haul too - i'd rather he was the oldest in the 4th class than the youngest. i think he'd probably just about manage in the first year but i'd rather he was better than "just about managing". If he has the choice then he might as well wait - its not like it changes much at home - he's at kiga every morning for the same hours he'd be at school

canella - I think you´re right to think about the long haul. That was certainly our thinking with dd and now ds. I´m sure they would have both coped in the first couple of years, but we worried if they hit problems later we would have always kicked ourselves for putting them into school early. Having said that, loads of children do start early without problems.

Ds was so cute this morning. I was joking with him about how it was impossible that he will turn 5 tomorrow because he is still my baby and he said, "Don´t worry, I´ll still give you lots of hugs and kisses." I have to say it bought a lump to by throat. I know it won´t last forever, but I´ll enjoy it while it does.

aw how sweet. Dd has said that when she grows up she will marry me

I am wondering if that is just so she can get out of the housework etc (taking a leaf out of dh's book).

Soon they will not want to be seen with us - and I suppose we will have more time to read books and things...

I wouldn't worry about year 4 tbh since what can you do about it? On this documentary the teachers were tutting about the dp who they obviously thought were barmy trying to get the dc's grades to a level that would ensure they got into gymnasium. What will they do, one teacher asked, once the dc are in grade 5. At the latest then they'll fail in the secondary school system anyway.

Great I thought. This is just really nice but tbh I know a few mums with kids at gymnasium already and they have never done a thing to help their dc - just had a nag at them to sit down and get the homework done before they even think of doing anything else - and they are all cruising through, 1s in everything, only ever had 2s in less academic subjects like PT or art. So I suppose that is who the system is geared toward.

One mum was pushing her dd to work very hard after school and they showed this little girl in tears, begging to be allowed out to play befroe it got dark. She had to do her homework, had tutoring and had to do an extra 2 hours a night study. There was no time for much else. Even when the dd was lying in bed, she came in and handed her a social studies folder (Sachkunde) and said to have another look and try and memorise as much as she could for a test the next day.

That's why it was scarey, all the thought and worry the mums were putting into it and all these tearful kids. Maybe they deliberately selected the worst footage to make a dramatic film though, you know?

I think the big issue with year 4 AFAIK is that each of these tests actually counts. They are all added up to get your yearly grade so you cannot flunk a few maths tests and get through on great dictation etc. I don't totally undrestand the system thogh tbh. Your dh will know how it works canella and can probably reassure you that it is all halb so wild.

mind you if you look at the thread on MN today about 11+ tutoring and how to get your dc into grammar schools, it doesn't sound hugely different.

Sorry about your old schoolmate, zz. Really sad.

canella, I have a November child, so could also choose and have kept her in the kiga.
The first class in By is really incredibly pressured, and you want to give your child every advantage possible. Remember they do in 4 years what is done in 6 years in teh UK. The pressure is ridiculous.

I saw the tests that last years first class did in February, and they had to not only read, but distinguish between the meaning of 4 very similar sentences.

For example:
Circle the sentence that applies to the picture.

Johanna is wearing a spotted dress, standing by a wall and holding an apple.
Johanna is wearing a red dress, standing by a wall and holding an apple.
Johanna is wearing a striped dress, standing by a fence and holding an apple.
Johanna is wearing a spotted dress, standing by a wall and holding a pear.

Bear in mind that these children only started to learn to read in mid-September!

No way would I let dd face that at only 5 years old.

By the way, I am determined that dd shall do english IGCSEs. We will simply bypass the system if it cant accomodate her.

when I ahve time, I will start a thread to ask for advice on what books to buy. Both the international schools near Mch are exam centres for Cambridge.

NN is in fact the expert on schools in Bayern. Much as she would rather not be.
NN would it make sense to approach teachers at that school re possible tutoring for those exams? I'm thinking, they would have all the books and/or could easily recommend which ones to order.

Those examples were from the year1 class in German NN and you have translated them into English here? Berlin had no tests in year 1 - or if they did I knew nothing about it.

I have asked teh school, but it is quite a job for the coordinator to collect the information, plus they may be relying on teachers own notes. We need tips on the best revision books that really cover the whole course.

I translated a typical question as I remember it. They were approximately like that.
The schools seem to have quite a lot of freedom to implement teh curriculum how they want. Eg, in a town near us, the Erste Klasse is already doing joined up writing, which ds2 did at the end of the 2. Klasse. So yes, I think the test wasnt standard is was just to scare the pants off give the parents an idea of how their children were doing.
Still far too hard for children whove only been learning to read for 6 months, imo.

find it OTT, as I recall dd's class wrote a class book on some animal, each dc contributing something (print not cursive), German spelling all over the place. Some wrote one line (boys), one girl wrote a whole page. That was right at the end of year 1 and we got it typed up by the teacher

Looked like gibberish at first glance. Really they just did their Fibel over the year, painstakingly slowly and got totally muddled in maths. That was year 1.

A girl in the 7. class gymnasium here has just switched to a w a l d o r...shhh you know school, for the free curriculum. She had got the stress level of just handing in blank sheets of paper for tests.

Yet I know another family with 2 boys at Gym, 9 and 10 class, seem to be coping fine. They come home, do their homework and go out and do loads of sport. The family is bright, professional parents, but not super-genius. how the hell do they do it?????!!

who knows?! It's a mystery all right. I have friends (mother Bulgarian, dad is Greek) who both have worked full-time right through with the exception of the first year in each of the two boys' lives. She runs her own company, he develops soft-ware. They have never had time to sit with their dc helping them with schoolwork, ahve never employed tutors, none of the grandparents speak German so when they visit, they don't get involved with schoolwork. They went to German kiga from 12 months, then school and Hort, are winding up Gymnasium no problem at all. Never had any problem with it and never got any help with it.

I can't help thinking possibly the language immersion might have helped, (although they are more or less trilingual, it was never emphasised much) - that totally German speaking kiga/school environement for so many hours a day, friends are all German speaking etc. Then the other thing - perhaps they just have the learning style to which the German Gymnasium is geared - and that's just luck, isn't it?

your dc had it much harder, being already bilingual in French and English when they arrived in Gemrany and then having to learn German whilst already in the German school system.

They would have been fine with it I reckon if it had not been for the whole testing/grading thing. They could have just picked up more and more German as they went and then it would all have clicked into place in time. If you aren't given that chance because the system doesn't really allow for it, that's quite discouraging.

NN do they wind up with some kind of qualification at those Waldorf schools? PMSl at not daring to even write the word. Stein er is the one I find a bit weird. I mean if they don't follow the curriculum, how do they get dc through Abitur etc? Doesn't the Abitur include coursework or is it just exams?

They do the mittlerer reife, and the abitur at this school. There is one near us that is in the top 100 gymnasiums in germany.

Not sure about the course work, maybe it is all exams.

I think it will all click into place for my children when they are in mid teens, just as it did for me. Too late, of course

There is a lot of help available if you know about it. If the kids don't speak german, they are entitled to guest student status, which effectively gives them an amnesty from probe, extra language lessons etc.

Mind you, it is hard going, in terms ofvolume of work. otoh, I am pleased the boys seem to be being a bit stretched - at IS they were not at all challenged. Ds2 still hadn't learnt to write cursive, so it's a huge leap for him to have to do eveything cursive, and of course the teacher is pissed off with how messy he is, but I am amazed at the progress he has made in a very short time

NN, how do you find out which are good gymnasiums?

It's snowing! I can't believe it. last week su nba th ing at the lake, this week snow !