Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Kuturzeit!

My cousin Cody has been working on a heritage project for one of his classes at school for almost two months now. The latest part is to present some sort of 'project' about his ethnic background to his class -- it can be anything, food, music, a game, etc. Turns out our family is German, so my aunt asked me if I had any ideas. Unfortunately Martin Luther is a bit too boring for sixth graders, and WWII/the Holocaust are waaaaaaaay too depressing. So I suggested perhaps classical music, since composers like Bach and Beethoven were born in Germany, or the 'Kuchenstunde' (cake hour)-- a word I made up so he'd have an excuse to take in Jewish Coffee Cake. Although, it must be noted that Germans really DO have a piece of cake and a cup of coffee or tea almost every afternoon. There has to be a real word for it, but I don't remember what it is. I also suggested the Brothers Grimm, since they're just morbid enough to be cool. No one wants to hear about how Hansel and Gretl escaped; 12-year-olds would rather hear about how the evil witch cooked them up and had them for dinner.

We also talked about the possibility of finding a German game that he could play -- but I couldn't think of anything like hopscotch or marbles or the like. I'm sure something exists, but I don't exactly spend my time hanging out with little girls who double-dutch jump rope! I did think of Bohnanza (about bean farmers!), but it's not like my family has a copy of it sitting around the house for times just like this. (At least, not til I buy it myself before I go home and bring back a copy of it for them...)

So does anyone (*cough*Jessica*cough*) know of any games that are 'typisch Deutsch'? A sixth grader's project is at stake!

1 comment:

Jessica said...

Na gut. Jetzt muss ich mir also was Tolles einfallen lassen... Hmm... (Ich glaube, übrigens, dass es einfach "Kaffee" oder "Kaffeepause" heißt, obwohl mir Kuchenstunde besser gefällt!)

Und Spiele...leider kenne ich nur Brettspiele, die deine Familie bestimmt nicht zu Hause hat. Tut mir Leid. :-( Aber ich finde deine Märchen-Idee herrlich. Das könnte man doch gut machen bei 12-jährigen!
Puppentheater ist noch sehr angesagt hier. So mit Marionetten und so. Aber das kann man auch nicht so gut in der Schule nachmachen. Leider habe ich in Deutschland nur wenig Kinder kennen gelernt und habe deswegen keine Ahnung, wie sie Spielen!