Libraries are Magical

How did we learn as infants?  Ask your parents.

I used this technique in teaching beginning German.

We first listened.  Then came learning to speak.

Finally, to read.  Write too.  Thus parents are

our first teachers.  The language of love knows

no bounds.  We made silly expressions.  Sang

songs.  Danced.  Wiggled and clapped hands.

Smiled. In German classes, we produced sounds

not in the English language.  The Umlaut.

We are a trilingual family:  German, French, English.

Starting foreign languages when young is so

beneficial. Children learn easily.   Our daughter

recorded me singing Brahms Lullaby in German

just as I had sung to our children daily as they

grew up.  It was not unusual for my classes to

sing together in German.  Daily for the nine

months in the womb, our granddaughter heard

me sing in German.  In the hospital at birth, my

daughter asked me to sing the lullaby to comfort

her with familiar sounds and words.  Now the

next generation of parents will teach. New

songs.   Music is food for the soul.  Libraries offer

a wealth of programs for the little ones and their

parents.  We often took our children to a story hour.

Music and gestures were involved.  One of our

favorite libraries was downtown.  The highlight

was the elevator which a man operated by

closing the first gate and then the door.  He

asked for floor numbers before the elevator climbed

upstairs to the large room for story hour. Sadly, that

library closed, but we discovered other branch

libraries.  We allowed our children to select

their own books in the children’s section.  They

checked them out too.  Such grownup activities!

We had new books to read aloud.  Songs to sing too.

And best of all, libraries became a weekly adventure.

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