26. Januar '19 - Wir sind wieder da!

Guten Morgen!

Today we finally got back into the swing of things after last week's unfortunate snow-based cancellation.

Our focus returned to our historical unit over Iron Age Germania, this covering the topic of warfare. We discussed the Roman military, its formation and tactics, and how this compared to the Germanic tribes of the time.
In short:technology, strategy and organization versus "go over there and hit that guy really really hard."

We then made our own either legionnaires or germanic warriors, and held a war game. "Eisenzeit Krieg" is a turn-based, dice-driven combat system (like D&D Very Lite) that I invented a few years back, and it's always a crowd pleaser. We had some real nail-biter combat rounds, culminating in the entire class engaging in a battle royale with only one survivor at the end.

Since we've been covering the past tense (perfect) in class lately, next week we will also start working on an assignment, "Meine Woche." Just like I've been doing in class, so too shall the kids start making presentations about their own weeks and what they've been up to.

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5. Januar '19 - Neujahr und Weitermachen

Guten Tag!

Today began like any other day before the usual descent into chaos.

We went over Meine Woche as "Meine Feiertage," and our listening comprehension was "Der Perfekte Hengst," (the perfect stallion) from My Little Pony.

Our lesson revolved around the perfect, otherwise known as the "spoken past." It's the past tense that uses helping verbs haben and sein, to differentiate it from the preterit or "written past."

The assignment was fairly simple: give me 10 sentences about what you did over the holidays. This took quite a while.

For the last 15 minutes of class, we went outside and enjoyed what will probably be some of the last warmth and sunshine we'll see for quite some time.

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