Six Animal Stories

Looking for School at Home story ideas? Here are three nicely told and illustrated quiet time stories by Eric Carle, and three classic German children’s shows. You could play them as audio only, or watch the video as well.

Quiet Story #1: Caterpillar
You can’t go past this classic story: It has numbers, days of the week, names of foods, and a biology lesson.  Here is the beautifully presented video of Die Kleine Raupe Nimmersatt (The Very Hungy Caterpillar)

Quiet Story #2: Chameleon
If you watch and listen to Chamaeleon Kunterbunt together, you can pause the video and ask your child to identify the chameleon’s various colours as the story progresses. There are lots of animals to pause on and identify as well. 

Quiet Story #3: Cricket  
Die kleine Grille singt ihr Lied, is about a cricket singing her song, and teaches about insects.

Classic German Children’s Show #1: Mouse
If you want to feel really German, you can join loads of German children (and parents) watching episodes of the hugely popular Die Sendung mit der Maus.  If the German is too complex for you/your child, there are also MausSpots which don’t have much text. 
The mouse has his own page (Die Seite mit der Maus!) where you can download games and short audio-books and all sorts of stuff. 
No doubt many German parents will remember it from their own childhood.  If you are interested, you can educate yourself culturally about the show here. 

Classic German Children’s Show #2:  Rabbits
For fans of the Guess How Much I Love You rabbits, there is a whole series of Weisst du eigentlich wie lieb ich dich habe stories online. 

Classic German Children’s Show #3:  Polar Bear
Lars der kleine Eisbaer is quite a gentle series. Letting your child enjoy Episode 1, for example, will give you 26 uninterrupted minutes to sterilise your house and hold your video conference for work…. uh, I mean, give your child 26 minutes of German education (!!!).  (Actually, if your child is sensitive maybe sit with them for episode 1 where Lars learns to swim and later accidentally floats away from his family on an ice raft and through a storm, to start his adventure…. from memory, it should be okay after that.  Spoiler alert: He returns safely to his family in the end.)