Suggested Activities
for Austrian Advent (2018) by Savvy Mom
Ruth Paget
The
following 23 activities for children, teens, and parents promote knowledge of
the German – speaking world using the German and English languages to learn
about Austria, Catholic Germany (Bavaria and Baden-Wurtëmberg), and German –
speaking Switzerland.
Advent
2018: December 2 – December 24.
The
activities below can be used one per day in addition to Advent Bible readings
for adults and Christmas picture book readings for children and teens as fun
activities after doing those two activites:
1-Watch
the film The Wizard of Oz by Frank O. Baum
2-Sing
Christmas carols in German and English
3-Learn
to waltz to the music of Austrian composer Johann Strauss such as the Blue
Danube
4-Do
a “show-and-tell” map and globe activity with large photos showing geographic
features and famous architecture of the German-speaking world such as:
-Countries
-mountains
-rivers
-lakes
-capitals
and other famous cities
-agricultural
areas
-famous
festivals
-famous
foods
5-Show
tourism documentaries from the consulates of the German-speaking countries in
English
6-Listen
to a Peter and the Wolf audio
This
Russian symphony for children was written in the 19th century. Young children listen to it to learn about
different instruments.
German
women were nannies employed by the Russian nobility while the French were
tutors and cooks for the nobility.
Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace reflects
part of this situation. (War and Peace was also the first
bilingual novel written in Russian and French.)
The
above information can be given as an introduction to the activity that runs as
follows:
A
music teacher will say the name of an instrument, show how it is played, play
the instrument, and say which animal in Peter and the Wolf is represented by
the instrument as the teacher holds up a picture of a fox, for example, along
with its spelling. The teacher, then,
plays the instrument.
As
children and teens listen to the Peter and the Wolf audio, the music teacher
holds up the instrument that each animal represents along with a picture of the
animal and the spelling of the animal’s name.
I
learned this Peter and the Wolf activity from my 4th-grade music
teacher in Royal Oak, Michigan.
7-Wilhelm
Tell Picture Book Storytelling
Wilhelm
Tell was a famous archer in the Swiss Middle Ages, who had to shoot an apple in
half off the top of his son’s head to save his son. Spoiler alert – Wilhelm Tell was a very good
archer.
Read
story and ask questions about favorite images and why children liked them
afterwards.
Have
children draw and color the scene they liked the most in the book.
Play
darts with a target board
Show
how to do archery and shoot arrows at a bullseye board
Write
a small play based on the picture book
Perform
the play written as a group for fun
Part
1 – To be continued up to Activity 23 on my next blog.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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