As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the focus on Monday’s Post will be the differences that I see between the US and Germany. I have been living here for about 8 months (oh my gosh it has been 8 MONTHS) and my current stage of culture shock is where I can observe differences without getting too worked up about them. At least not ALL the time. But I still have ups and downs. I am also slowly {starting} to see myself come up with solutions to differences and creating new pathways forward in life.
In the US, a lot of parents, grandparents, and care givers take their babies and children to storytime at the library. I started taking Isaac when he was just a couple months old. I didn’t realize how much I liked that kind of program until I arrived in Germany. The first thing I did when we arrived here was go to the library in Rehau. BUT it turns out that the library here has really limited hours and barely any programs for kids and NO programs for babies.
The difference is….. the library in Germany isn’t a source of community events like it is in the US. Instead there are multi-generation houses that serve as a source of community events and programs. They have things like musik class and they can help network you to mom groups with local churches or the La Leche League. I can post another time about the mom groups and programs I have discovered in the Hof / Rehau area.
{I have to note that we live in a really small town in a quiet area of Germany so there might be more resources and programs at your library if you live near a bigger city in Germany.}
But basically, I went to as many mom groups as I could find and did a musik class, but it all still left a huge {storytime sized hole} in my heart. I missed storytime.
To fill this hole – I decided to start my own storytime group. So far it has worked out great and might even be better than if I had found a storytime at the library. I enjoy having mom’s and babies over to our house. The atmosphere is relaxed and we enjoy books and songs in both English and German. It will help me learn more German in a fun way and the other kids will be exposed to some English. It is so great that I have met a really wonderful group of mom’s who want to come over each week.
Because I think it would be helpful to other mom’s or even folks who are at the early stages of learning German – I will start posting the program that we do each week. Maybe another mom somewhere in the world wants to do something like this with their kid, but just needs some ideas.
The BEST part is that this storytime program pushes me to search out children’s songs and books in German, learn more German words as I write down the program each week, and clean my house.
Lots of Love, Judi
Image credit:
http://www.psbnyc.com/about_us/index?tag_name=childrens_story_time
