> "Trunk or Treat" pix excellent as I don't believe I've ever registered that phrase before. I assume it's like a car boot sale, only with more calories and less money exchanged. 😉
> teaching My mother was a foreign language instructor; I come by it naturally. 😉 I did have a lot of children balk, but as they come in groups, you only need to find the more confident child and get them to try saying it, and soon the rest follow, unwilling to miss out on that extra candy... And I can be very patient if need be. I had one group where the children hesitated (admittedly they were preschoolers 😆), and the mothers jumped in to inform me of this fact and say 'they couldn't possibly'. I pointed out that even the dog understands English commands, and soon I had all of the little buggers repeating after me. I only let one guy off the hook, baby Yoda (Grogu), in his PJs, barely old enough to walk and still sucking his thumb, so I figured he shouldn't be made to try. Naturally I still docked him a candy bar (in part because his older sister was most likely going to be the beneficiary anyway). One girl scored an extra candy bar yet by coming up with an English Halloween poem I hadn't heard before. (The best I can do spontaneously would be something from Shakespeare's cauldron scene from Macbeth or the decidedly less posh "trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat".)
As a whole, German children are regularly tortured subjected to events where they must recite something, even if they're imported holidays and no such custom existed in the original. It matters not. Never miss an opportunity for rote learning! (I have no idea if that's actually a good thing, but it's definitely a cultural phenom either way.)
excellent as I don't believe I've ever registered that phrase before. I assume it's like a car boot sale, only with more calories and less money exchanged. 😉
> teaching
My mother was a foreign language instructor; I come by it naturally. 😉 I did have a lot of children balk, but as they come in groups, you only need to find the more confident child and get them to try saying it, and soon the rest follow, unwilling to miss out on that extra candy... And I can be very patient if need be. I had one group where the children hesitated (admittedly they were preschoolers 😆), and the mothers jumped in to inform me of this fact and say 'they couldn't possibly'. I pointed out that even the dog understands English commands, and soon I had all of the little buggers repeating after me. I only let one guy off the hook, baby Yoda (Grogu), in his PJs, barely old enough to walk and still sucking his thumb, so I figured he shouldn't be made to try. Naturally I still docked him a candy bar (in part because his older sister was most likely going to be the beneficiary anyway). One girl scored an extra candy bar yet by coming up with an English Halloween poem I hadn't heard before. (The best I can do spontaneously would be something from Shakespeare's cauldron scene from Macbeth or the decidedly less posh "trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat".)
As a whole, German children are regularly tortured subjected to events where they must recite something, even if they're imported holidays and no such custom existed in the original. It matters not. Never miss an opportunity for rote learning! (I have no idea if that's actually a good thing, but it's definitely a cultural phenom either way.)
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