Amy's learning how to count!

[pne]

I think she can recognise two items already (i.e. know that there are "two" of them).

She's also starting to remember the number words and which order they come in... mostly ("one, two, f'ee, five, six").

Comments

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

Yay!

Erika definitely knows about "two" -- she frequently picks up two of something and tells me there are two, or tears something in half and talks about having two.

And she sort of counts in the same way you describe, but I don't think she really grasps what the numbers mean. Kind of like singing the alphabet song -- she always gets the letters in the right order, but often skips some of them, and she doesn't really know which letter names match up with which written letters.

Incidentally, do German children typically sing an alphabet song, or is that an English-language phenomenon?

[pne.livejournal.com]

And she sort of counts in the same way you describe, but I don't think she really grasps what the numbers mean.

Hm, good point. I suppose Amy also considers it a bit of a game -- she says numbers when prompted with "one", but I can imagine she hasn't grasped the concept that the last number spoken stands for the count of items.

she doesn't really know which letter names match up with which written letters.

Ah, Amy has that bit down :) for over half the letters, at least. (In capital form, at any rate -- the shape that letters appear in her Fisher-Price play school.)

Though I doubt she knows that letters are used for writing; as Stella reminded me, assigning names to shapes just means that something has a name, just like round things are "circle"s and boxy things are "square"s, round things with a part missing are "C"s. Except that I think she knows that the sequence of letters A-M-Y stands for "Amy".

Incidentally, do German children typically sing an alphabet song, or is that an English-language phenomenon?

Good question. I know an alphabet song, sung to the same tune as the English one (as in Ah, vous dirais-je Maman or Twinkle, twinkle, little star), but I'm not sure whether that's common German knowledge, or even where I learned it from.

And I'm not sure how to end it, since it's rather more lame than the English version where you can tack on something along the lines of "Now I know my ABC; next time won't you sing with me".

I sing: "A B C D E F G / H I J K, L-M-N-O-P / Q R S T U V W / X Y Z", where LMNOP is sung quickly, and the last line just kinds of ends rather unsatisfactorily.

Stella said she knows it, too, and thinks that something comes after "Z" but doesn't remember what.

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

Regarding a German alphabet song, I also know one, but I didn't know whether it was widely known.

The way I learned it was:

A B C D E F G
H I J K L M N O P
Q R S T U V W
Q R S T U V W
X Y Z joch he!
Das ist das ganze ABC

Which at least comes out evenly, though it's a little silly to repeat some of the letters twice and insert a sort of nonsense exclamation after the "Z".

Here in the US, every child knows the "ABC song". I'd say it's one of the most popular 10 songs for young children, along with classics like, "twinkle twinkle little star," "the itsy bitsy spider," "the wheels on the bus," "monkeys on the bed," "old macdonald," "if you're happy and you know it," "baa baa black sheep," etc.

What would you say are the most popular 5 or 10 german children's songs?

[pne.livejournal.com]

Stella says "Alle Leut'" (which is apparently sung in all sorts of play groups at the end) and the birthday song by Rolf Zuckowski whose refrain starts "Wie schön, dass du geboren bist". And maybe "Ich geh' mit meiner Laterne".

The first I thought of was "Alle meine Entchen".

But there are really a wealth of German children's songs -- we have a book which has quite a few, and I know most of them (though I wouldn't necessarily know the words to even the first verse for all of them), so I'm not sure what representative popular ones would be.

Which reminds me, I really like the book we have, and I'd really like to have a similar one in English, with popular children's songs. Because I don't really know any by heart, even "Twinkle, twinkle, little star", for example.

Do you have any recommendations for good books with children's songs (and songs sung to children even if they're not specifically for them, e.g. perhaps Christmas songs etc.)? Preferably with words and music.

Oh, and in case you would like our German book: it's "Das große Buch der Kinderlieder", by Michael Holtmann, with illustrations by Albert Kokai; our copy has ISBN 3-932137-59-0.

We saw it at a friend's place, and I liked it because it's fairly comprehensive: a wide range of songs, and also nicely done (with illustrations, one song per double page, not just the first verse, music with chords).

Though as Stella points out, while those songs are traditional children's songs, not every child will know all of them. Which is a bit of a pity, because they _are_ traditional, and if children learn only ten songs, eight of which are modern, then I think there's some folklore going lost. Sort of as if children had never heard of certain "standard" fairy tales such as Snow White or Cinderella.

So, perhaps we should sing some more with Amy :) Stella said she doubts Amy knows "Alle meine Entchen"; if that's true, that'll have to be remedied, given that it's the first song that comes to my mind when I think of "common German children's songs".

And also teach her some English nursery rhymes -- again, I think those are part of culture and something people should be familiar with. Though we do have a couple of books for those. It's mostly English songs I'm missing.

[fridoline.livejournal.com]

I think the Alphabet Song came on the German "Sasamstraße" - possibly simply a translation from the English version which might have appeared on "Sesame Street".