German articles of clothing and random history

This week, we practiced vocabulary related to clothing by listening to a cute German children's song and making our own "Hampelmann." Homework was just a short worksheet answering questions about what your Hampelmann is wearing. This is the song we learned in class.

And here are some activities to practice as well:

A game of memory
Listen and find (click on an article of clothing. The narrator will say the article of clothing and you search for it in the list. Once you've found everything, hit check.)
PacMan We haven't talked a lot about gender, but try your best with identifying the correct gender of the articles of clothing. If you get it right, you're immune to the ghosts. If you get it wrong, your turn ends and you get to start over.

While we worked on our Hampelmänner, we discussed a little of the history of English. I don't know why this video doesn't say it outright, but the influence from Scandinavia comes from the Vikings. Just an interesting note if you are at all interested in linguistics, history and anthropology: Historians look at language to see the relationships between people groups. The kinds of words we borrow from other languages tell a lot about the relationships between groups of people even if historical records weren't kept. So it isn't surprising that words like "ransack," "slaughter" and "die" come from the Vikings. But it might surprise you that words like "leg," "window," and "husband" do as well! Here is a list of words we can thank the Vikings for.

We also talked a little about the Holocaust and the special case of Denmark who resisted the Nazis efforts to round up the Jews. This video talks about the night the Nazis tried to round up 11,000 Jews and how almost all of them got away.

If you are interested, this article has more details. Only 70 Danish Jews lost their lives. An incredible testament to the care and compassion of the Danish people!

And finally, another episode of Tro Tro! As we learn more German, hopefully you understand more of what is going on. He gets himself dressed in this episode so listen carefully for the articles of clothing we talked about in class!

Auf Wiedersehen!

~Frau Hanley