Language Farm Journals
On Tuesday morning we all met at 7:30 am in front of school to wait for the bus. After a short time the bus arrived. We put our luggage on the bus and got on. The bus ride was going to be about 5 hours. On the bus we listened to music, talked to friends, and read books. After we drove about 2 hours we had a long stop. In that time we used the bathroom, bought food and something to drink. Back in the bus we watched a movie, “ Asterix und Obelix” . When the movie ended, we were already there and got off. There we unpacked and went to lunch. It was spaghetti with meat sauce. After lunch the counselor from our small language group showed us around the farm. They told us about all the animals on the farm. When the tour was over we got to choose what activities we wanted. There were many activities such as : song writing, starfish sewing, making dreamcatchers and pinatas. Once we signed up we had a break. When the break ended we played trust games where we had to depend on the other kids. At 6:45 pm we got called to the evening circle . The evening circle is when the counselors told us the daily saying. On Tuesday it was “there is a first time for everything. Once the counselors were done talking we all went to dinner. At dinner we had to speak English. After dinner we went to the fire side to sing songs. We learned the Language Farm song and a song from the Beatles. At 9:30 was our bed time, it was a lot of fun, and a long day!
by: Carolin Lohf
Wednesday, 5th October 2011
Boring music woke us up at 7.30 am. But it was party time when Dominik changed the CD into cool music. After a quick wash we went outside to the morning circle. There we could listen to the noises of the animals, because we had to be quiet for one minute. Then Ian said: “When life gives you lemon make lemonade!” That means: Make the best of your life.
We had good pancakes for breakfast. Later we had to do the duties. That are things we had to do at the farm, like to wash the dishes, to make farm work, to find firewood, to clean the rooms and so on… We had to speak English there, because it is a language farm.
Before lunch Ian and his team made the daily country presentation. There we learned how people live in the USA. It was really interesting.
In the afternoon we chose our small language groups. Some of us built a Wicker man. That is a large man of wood, which we lighted up at the fireside on Friday. Some played music, made Starfishes or built a Piñata filled with lots of sweets. The others went horse riding or baked sweet cakes.
It was sunny and warm, so one part of us played the game baseball outside for the next one and a half hour. The others painted pictures. These funny activities made us very hungry for dinner. In the evening we walked to the fireside. In the dark some of us were really scared. There we sang lots of English songs. My favorite song was the Language Farm Song. Another great song was “A hard day’s night” from the Beatles. Ian played the guitar. At 9.30 pm it was the bad time, because we had to go to bed. Before we slept we were talking about the day. Sometimes Mr Hecker came into the rooms and said: “Stop talking! You must go to bed! Switch off the flashlights!”
That was the end of the second exciting day on the Language Farm.
By Florian Aust
Thursday, 6th October 2011
We woke up with classic music everyday at half past seven. Also on the 8th October. After that we had 30 minutes to get dressed and tidy up our rooms. 30 minutes later at 8 o´clock we had to be ready.
for the morning circle. In the morning circle we had to give hands to the person standing next to us and close our eyes for one minute. On the Language-Farm we had other days. They were not called
Monday Tuesday Wednesday and so on. Thursday for example was called Australia day. So on of the counselor told us a wise saying from Australia
I will cross the bridge when I come to it. Then it was time for breakfast. We had English breakfast. That was scrumbled eggs, toast and beans. After that we had a short break for 15 minutes to brush our teeth and get ready for
the duties. The duties were farm work, like doing dishes , cleaning and collecting fire wood. On this day I did farm work. We fed the rest of our breakfast, lunch and dinner to the pigs. They liked it very much.
Then we gave some corn to the horses and the cow too. That was great, because it was Australia day. So the counselor told us a lots of interesting things about Australia. It was very exciting and we got a lot of information about the Australian people, the animals and the country.
After the presentation we had a short fruit break. After the fruit break we could play baseball or make friendship braceletts.
In baseball first we learned how to catch the ball with our big baseball gloves then we practiced batting. When we did it well; we played all together a baseball match. We took four threads and made knots.
Everyone enjoyed it.
When the friend choose were finished, they looked really nice.
After that we were in small groups together and we had to study our sketches, which we presented at the last evening. for lunch we had cheese sandwiches with tomato sauce. All kids liked it very, very much.
After lunch we had 45 minutes break. We read a book or talked to the other kids. Then we had project groups. I was in the baking group-that was really cool. On Tuesday we made coconut biscuits.
On Wednesday we made a banana chocolate cake, that was the best. On Thursday we baked a carrot cake.
Here is the baking list of the carrot cake:
4 cups flower, 4 cups of sugar, 4 tea spoon of cinnamon, 4 tea spoon baking polver, 2 ½ cups of oil, 8 eggs and 8 carrots.
I found it was the best project, because it was funny, I like baking and we made a lots of jokes and sketches while we ate the cakes.
We ate the cake in the afternoon as a snack. Another possibility you could choose for example creating a dream catcher. Oh, you don’t know, what that is? Well, I can explain: It’s a round thing with a net in it. The net is there for catch the bad dreams. Usually there’s a small hole for the good dreams. So you have always good dreams. After the group and snack time we went back to our small language group again. We also played baseball again. We also had the possibility to draw pictures.
Now it was break time- 1h and 30 minutes we could do what we want for example taking a shower. After the break we made the evening circle. At dinner we ate fish and chips.
At last we sang songs in English while we were sitting around the fire place. The special song was the language farm song. “I like the flowers, I like the daffodils, I like the mountains, I like the rolling hills, I like the fire side when the sun is going down. I like the song.
After that it was time to go to bed. We brushed our hairs and cleaned our teeth. So we slept well till the next morning.
FRANZISKA & LUISA
Friday, 7th October 2011
At 7.30 in the morning we had to get up with music. We got dressed and at 8 o´clock we went to the morning circle. We had to be quiet and closed our eyes. Then we said a sentence:
Many hands make light work.
And then we said: good morning.
After that we had breakfast. But the people from the Language Farm asked questions and the kids from each table had to answer. When we had the questions right, then we went and got our breakfast. After the good breakfast we cleaned our teeth and did our jobs. We cleaned the dining hall, we cleaned the dishes or we went in the wood and got firewood for the fire in the evening. Later we got dressed for a long walk in the wood to play a funny game. We started to walk. We walked and walked. Then we ate sandwiches with tomato and we ate an apple. Then we went on. Then we came to a big place and played our game. We were in two teams and we had to hide. We had to find the flag our opposing team. It was fun. We played our game long and then we went back to the Language Farm. Then all kids had a shower. After the shower we made our evening circle.
We said: good evening.
Then we had dinner. But we had to answer questions. We had many pizzas.
A PIZZA PARTY!
After dinner we had presentations about horse riding, baking or other things.
Then we had a fire. We sang songs.
At 10.30 pm we made our night circle and said:
good night.
We cleaned our teeth, got dressed and went to bed.
Written by Isabel Martincic (6b)
Saturday on the Language Farm
At 7.30 am we woke up with classic music. Then we got dressed. After that we packed our bags, cleaned our rooms and washed our faces. Later we had a morning circle where we closed our eyes and relaxed. There we heard a saying for each day. On Saturday it was: “If you want to see a rainbow you have to put up with the rain.” After that we had breakfast. We ate French toast with jam and drank orange juice or water. Then we brushed our teeth. After that we did farm work (fed pigs, cows, goats and horses). The goats were our favourite animals on the farm. Then Holly made a very interesting presentation about Wales and we learned that its capital is Cardiff. After that we had our last circle. And for lunch we ate salad and a noodle soufflé. At 1 pm there was a nice good bye for us. We talked about the week on the farm and we said what we enjoyed and what wasn’t so great. Then we put our bags into the bus and on our way home we watched the films “ICE AGE“ in English, “LUCKY LUKE” and “GARFIELD” in German. That was fun! At 6.15 pm we came back to Ludwigsburg where all the parents waited for us.
We had a great time on the Language Farm.
by Sven Heinle and Marc-Philipp Dömling