Apps for a toddler and me, learning German

[NoHunIntended]

Hallo!

DH, DS (18mo) and I have just arrived in Germany for DH's work.
I speak no German apart from what I am picking up now, so pretty much an absolute beginner. I should get lessons from DH's work, but it depends on childcare, and even if it is doable, a little head start would be great.

DS likes playing on the iPad, and I don't get much time out to concentrate on learning German (other than just being immersed in the language here, being out and about, watching films/tv etc), so I think some Apps aimed at toddlers/young children would be great: fun and hopefully educational for us both, and the repetition should help some of it sink it for me. The alphabet, numbers, days of the week, vocabulary, that kind of thing, ideally written as well as spoken, as I find this helps me hear it better.
Can anyone recommend any please?
Anything not aimed at toddlers and just for me would be good, the odd snatched moments that I get!

Also any online resources?

We do have some books too:

• Das Kitzelbuch
• Wenn kleine Bären schlafen gehen
• Wo Ist Mami?
• Weißt du eigentlich, wie lieb ich dich hab?
• Die Schnecke und der Buckelwal
• Der Grüffelo
• Vom kleinen Maulwurf, der wissen wollte, wer ihm auf den Kopf gemacht hat
• First Thousand Words in German

but if anyone has any recommendations for more, that would be great.

Danke.

Hi NoHun, I don't know much about apps I'm afraid, but have you looked at BBC language courses? The German language page looks to have a lot of useful information on it; there's an online course here and also activities for children.

I started learning German with a BBC course (before I started learning it at school) and am sure it helped tremendously with my accent as I was exposed to "authentic" German before I heard German from my (British) German teachers at school - not that that's going to be a problem for you, as you'll be surrounded by the language anyway. The course was very well structured from what I can remember of it and I picked up loads, although it's bound to have changed a lot since then (it was on a record back in those days!).

I'll have a look on the children's bookshelves once they're up to see if they have any books I would recommend.

NoHun There´s information on various apps here, but I haven´t tried them myself so I don´t know how good they are.
I bought a computer programme from digital publishing which I found really good and it explained the grammar quite clearly. This was 10 years ago, so it´s probably been updated since then.

My parents really rate the Michel Thomas CD courses. I had a stint at learning Spanish that way (just listened for 10 min a day, which is very doable!) Having been a Berlitz teacher, I was very sceptical about the MT method, which involves translating English sentences into the target language, but actually doing the Spanish course made me feel quite confident about expressing fairly complex ideas in Spanish. However, although I could say something like "i am worried about the economic problems", I wouldn't have understood a word of the answer! Still, my mum seems to follow most of what is said in German when she's here and she's done a lot more of the German course than I did of the Spanish.

I found when I first moved here that I naturally ended up talking to, and friends with, other foreign students more than German natives. Even fluent foreigners usually use a smaller active vocabulary and speak more slowly/carefully so are easier to understand. A language course is a great way to meet other people at a similar standard and if you are forced to speak German by not having another language in common, then you can build friendships in German. Ime if you have friends who you speak to in English, you won't switch to speaking German with them later on (but you need some English friendships asap, because you won't start to feel settled until you do).

Thank you all for the replies, much appreciated. Those BBC links are great, Linzer, I shall give those a try.

hupa, great resource, thank you, will have a closer look, probably with DH, when DS lets us! :)

silken, I will consider those MT CDs too, I should probably try anything and everything, in the hope something sinks in. I will make an effort to speak with German-speaking people, rather than English. I am not too concerned about finding other Brits, I am getting anti-social in my old age! :)

This is the kind of thing I am looking for: www.carlsen.de/web/digital/apps. Anything else similar, please post! Or German versions of stuff like Dr.Seuss, Thomas The Tank Engine, Toy Story, or something like a German version of Dora The Explorer.