Increasing Your Minority Language Resources

While nothing beats interaction with German-speakers to keep the language alive in our house; to help the kids pick up more words and phrases; to get more self-confident speaking it; to improve what they already know; and to see the point of trying in the first place, we have a lot of other things around that help us keep going. Kids are kids after all, and they need to play and be read to and have fun in and with German, else they’ll just get bored and tune out.

So we have a ton of books and CDs around, some DVDs and board games, and also a learning computer. We’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of all these things, but getting things in other languages is not always easy or can be quite expensive when you order on-line and get hit with international shipping fees and an exchange rate that may be hard to swallow.

We are lucky in that our friends and relatives in Germany have kept (are keeping!) us well-stocked with all of the above. We probably have almost as many German books as English ones, and we definitely have many more German CDs (both music and stories). We don’t have a lot of DVDs overall, but we probably have an even number in each language. And we also have a number of German board games, some of which involve kids being read to and having to pick things out of the story or talking about various aspects of the game. Plus, our kids have not yet figured out that a German game could also be played in English, so by default we play these games in German :)

If you don’t have anyone who can send or bring you such resources (or you are like me and are still always on the look-out for more so the kids have more variety and choice), you can also try some of the following (and hey, if German is not what you are after, just substitute the below with the appropriate equivalent):

• Your local Goethe Institut might have a small bookstore or library. Ours unfortunately stopped all library services and the bookstore is very expensive, but it might be worth your while to give them a call.
• The German consulate/embassy responsible for your region might list German bookstores or stores which carry German stuff (judging from my own experience, these are usually very expensive).
• Order on-line – have it shipped to a friend’s or relative’s address (usually for free) and have them deliver it to you/pick it up on your next visit if you don’t want to pay international shipping fees.
• Order together with others and split shipping and all other fees.
• Buy tons of what you think might be interesting for your kids every time you get the chance and leave things in your closet or whatever hiding space you use and get stuff out sprinkled throughout the year. For example, I still have about 15 books, games and Kindergarten Basics activity books stashed away in my closet that I ordered and had shipped to Oma to bring over when she was here last summer :)
• Check out what your local library has and can get through interlibrary loans.
• Lend out and borrow stuff to and from your friends.
• Graciously and gratefully accept hand-me-downs from friends whose kids may have outgrown some of their own books, CDs, etc.
• Contact your local German School and German Saturday School to see if they loan things out even if your kid is not attending. I haven’t actually done this, but we sure appreciated our Saturday School’s lending library when Punk 1 went there last year, so maybe I should.
• If you are part of a playgroup, try to set up a basic library or trade what you no longer need with the other people in the group. We had this going for a little bit in our playgroup, but we now do it more privately (just like everything else with this group).
• We’ve also come across used books at cultural events around town.
• Also try things like Craig's List, Kijiji and Freecycle, you never know what you'll find.

Good luck, your kids will appreciate having many different stories to pick from!