Kennenlerntag

Today was Kennenlerntag. Kennenlerntag is for the children who are planning on attending school next year. The children spend a few hours in the elementary's school classroom doing various activities, while a teacher from the elementary school and kindergarten evaluate them. When Adeline's short school day of two and half hours was over with is when Emmie attended school for about two hours during her kindergarten time. 

Emmie shared with me how she got to be in sissy's school for a little bit with her own school supplies. At first, she was upset because they spelled her name wrong.  She told the teacher her name, Emmeline, was spelled wrong when she arrived. According to Emmie, they forgot an m and put a j in place of an l because it had a hook on it. When the teacher asked Emmie to spell it for a new name tag, Emmie spelled it in English, but the teacher wrote it based on the German pronunciation. Once again she said it was wrong as she now saw something like Immileni. The teacher then wrote out a new nametag like the first one and Emmie stated again it was wrong, but the teacher insisted it was correct. Emmie was not happy, but wore her name tag as the teacher asked her to do. As Emmie was telling me, I noticed she was playing with the crumbled name tag. I was able to salvage it and see the missing m, plus explain to her it how the little l was not a j and tell her the Germans write their small ls with a hook. I just wonder why the teacher did not ask Emmie to write her name? 

Emmie informed me she was in the same class with Zoe, our neighbor upstairs, and sat next to her. She was very happy about this. Emmie told me she was in a class with four girls and five boys. The teacher asked Emmie in English to count the girls so she did and correctly replied in English. She then asked Emmie in German how many girls and Emmie replied correctly in German. They played a few games and then read a story. One of the teachers told the story to Emmie in English before reading the story in German to the group. In German, the teacher said to ask questions if the children did not understand something. Emmie said she raised her hand on one word because she did not understand it. It was a long German word that was new to her and the teacher answered her question. Afterwards, they could pick out a picture to color or play a game. She picked out a princess fairy and did a nice job coloring it and carefully cutting it out. The teacher than asked her to write her name on the back side, so she wrote "EMMIE" and spelled it correctly. She also shared with me how one of the boys did not want to sit and color, so he went and played a game. They concluded their time in the classroom ny singing songs.

I was very happy to hear Emmie had a fun time in class. The school staff knows we have been here for almost two years now, so I am not sure why they first spoke English during the activities to her since she is in the German kindergarten. I am unsure how this will factor in for evaluating her if is she is ready for school, or if it even will at all. I am just glad she had a good overall experience of being in the classroom environment.