English Conversations With The Children.

What a privilege for us to teach the village kids.

This is week two of one of our wonderful adventures. We have organized conversation time with the young kids, to encourage English speaking. We have two afternoons per week with the various age groups. In Austria we are classified as ' Native ' English speakers. Doesn't that sound funny, even though it is true ?

It is amazing to see how intelligent all of the kids are. The whole time, Bob and I only speak English with them. Obviously there are hand gestures involved, but on the whole they understand very well. One tends to forget how kids almost hoover up knowledge and new things. This will keep us on our toes for sure !

Was it in the nineties that there was this series with Bill Cosby talking to children ?
( I could only find the book version on Amazon :Kids Say the Darndest Things )
Gosh, I still remember laughing at some of the things the children came out with.

Well, yesterday, I was watching one of the kids do a drawing of a house. It turns out it was his house. He drew a few windows and I started discussing the finer architectural points with him. Such as: Whose window is this, and where does the door go. You get the idea. Well he drew a few prominent windows. " That must be your bedroom ? "..." Yes ". I saw a window in the attic and asked him if a Mouse lived there ? " Nooooo, not a mouse, this is the attic. "

Realizing that he did not quite understand me, I left him to carry on drawing. Shows you, how wrong I can be. He got my attention a few minutes later when he showed me the now completed drawing. He had drawn a ladder up the whole of the house and an almost superhero like figure next to it. " This is my Daddy, and he will climb up the ladder to hit the mouse with a broom " How ingenious !

But as everything in life is a two way street, I am fairly certain, that some of the kids will tell their friends of a few things Bob and I say or do, that they think is funny. Embarrassingly I had forgotten the name of a ' theme ' cushion, one of them brought. Now I know it was " Disney Cars 2 Lightning McQueen ". Yet at the time I was using various forms of lightening and car terminology, that had them roll their eyes !

Well, what had me blush with embarrassment, was Bob telling me that while we were singing ' Old MacDonald had a Farm ' with the small kids, one of the Mums was recording it on her smartphone. My singing career did not even survive assembly, back in my school days. In those days, one or more of the teachers used to walk up and down the aisle, checking that everyone was actually singing. When one came past me, she stopped, listened, and politely asked me to stop singing.... Oh dear, YouTube here we come...

Biggi