In one of the last sessions of the preschool course in our Academy the topic was "verbs and prepositions" in German. Sounds complicated? Not at the LIMU-Academy!
The children used picture cards and explained the situations shown on the cards with the help of verbs they already knew and some verbs they had just learned.
For example:
Auf diesem Bild fliegt ein Vogel. (On this picture a bird is flying.)
Auf diesem Bild weint ein Mädchen. (On this picture a girl is crying.)
The course teacher then asked them some questions, for example:
Wie fliegt der Vogel? - Mit seinen Flügeln. (How does the bird fly? - With its wings.)
Warum weint das Mädchen? - Weil es traurig ist. (Why does the girl cry? - Because she is sad.)
This created a dialogue between the course teacher and the children!
Then the children practised the tenses in German: past tense, present tense and future tense. This way the so called "geteilte Verben" (similar to phrasal verbs in English) were practised, because they are used in forming the past tense as well as the future tense. For this the children used picture cards again, that showed one situation on three seperate cards: in the past, in the present and in the future. With the help of these cards the children had to tell the story that was depicted.
In the end the children practised prepositions. For that they got an exercise sheet with a stickman on it. The course teacher gave them instructions and they had to draw them on the exercise sheet. For example: "a bird is flying over you" or "in front of you there is a table with a glass of water on it". The children then drew a bird flying over the stickman and a table with a glass on it in front of the stickman.
