German Au Pair Frauke H. has been spending her time in the program in Laura Rossi’s Richmond, VA cluster. Recently she visited Old Hundred Elementary School, Midlothian where she did a Global Awareness presentation to a group of 20 Kindergartners.
Frauke tells about her day: “I introduced myself to the class and told them that I am the Au Pair of their classmate Daisy (6). Daisy and I prepared a big map of the world, where we showed them the way I came to the US with a plane across the Atlantic Ocean. The kids made guesses how long the flight was and found out that the flight was 11 hours long with a stop in New York before I took a second plane to Richmond, VA. We showed them the picture that we took when Daisy and her family picked me up at the Airport. Some of the kids in the class already went to Germany and shared their experiences.
After that I told them the differences of the traditions and holidays. We don’t celebrate Halloween or Thanksgiving in Germany, but we have Oktoberfest where we are wearing the traditional dresses like I do in the picture. And there is another special day in Germany called Nikolaus Day.
After this general information we spilt the class in three smaller groups. One group colored pictures with a typical German theme. The second group colored, all together, on a big paper a German flag for the class. The last group learned some basic German words like how they introduce themselves, thank you, good morning and everyone was allowed to pick one word they wanted to learn how to say in German. Most kids picked an animal, food or a flower. Before we rotated the groups every child shared the word they picked with the whole class.
At the end of my presentation we sang a German song all together.
It was an awesome experience to show the kids new things and a lot of them were really interested in learning German words. I was impressed how good they remembered the words I told them and how fast they learned how to sing the German song. The teacher was really thankful that I came to their class. Maybe I will come next year a second time because it was fun for all of us.”
