German Au Pair Derya, in Kim van Cleave Michael’s Seattle cluster, used a puppet to tell about Germany to a group of pre-schoolers.
Derya explained that she was trying to find an interesting way to be able to tell about her home country that a group of pre-schoolers would want to sit through. Her host child loves when Derya plays with puppets. So Derya brought a monkey puppet to the Pre-school and did a presentation in which she talked to the puppet and the puppet asked her questions about Germany.
Derya talks about her experience: “At first I said that Germany was far away and that if I’d fly back now it would take me 12 hours – which is about 36 episodes of a popular kids series (LEGO Ninjago). After that the puppet “came out“ and wanted to join the presentation. I told the kids that Germany is small in comparison to the USA. I showed the kids a map of the USA and gave the example that Germany is only the half of Texas. After that the puppet wanted to add an example and said “if the USA was a Christmas tree, Germany would be an ornament“. I also taught the puppet a Christmas song (“Es schneit“) and the puppet “needed help“ from the children so they sang it together with him. I also taught the children (and the puppet) German words and showed them how to count in German.
During the presentation the children did not seem bored and listened patiently. The puppet really helped keeping the children on track and I recommend other people to do that in front of little children. I learned how important it is to exchange information and experiences from your home country. In this way people connect in a bigger way than even countries connect. Which shows us that we live in different countries but in one world. Thank you for that experience.”