Dear readers,

Last week we enjoyed a very unique and inspiring workshop with Frau Eva Petrascheck, my very own mother-in-law and a poet. The initial thought that took us to this cooperation was that I felt our students needed some relaxation time and some magic, especially in the time of Corona and hectic online school, endless homework and tests.

In our class we were learning about poetry as a literary style, the verse generator and famous German poets. The students chose poems to recite at our Christmas Party on December 12th.

Frau Eva wrote 2 poems specifically for our class, where students had to fill in the missing words and playfully repeat all kinds of rhymes and word opposites. Please, read more about the poetry class in Frau Eva’s contribution below.

In conclusion I’d like to remind us all to take a break and read a poem or two and marvel upon the words, in their little way they can express so much. In class or at home, verses make a very welcome break and teach us to think, get stuck in your head, annoy us like earworms and excite us if we get one right! Try one right now!

Bäume leuchtend, Bäume blendend,
Überall das Süße spendend…..

Katja Petrascheck
School Director and Teacher

Eva Petrascheck – Loving Poems, Living with Poetry? 

Well, older generations are pretty sure that they did. Before TV and computers began to dominate our daily life and leisure time activities, children as well as their parents used to live with books: songbooks, books with fairy tales and –   of course – books with poems:  funny, romantic and comic poems banned their eyes, trained their stylistic abilities and inspired their imagination.

Poems are still part of our culture and identity and the German culture offers a great variety of poems that people admire, love and never forget.

Considering all this, Katja Petrascheck organized a Poetry Workshop with her class and I had the pleasure to assist.  We passed the time talking about poetry in general, reading aloud the Christmas poems students had individually chosen (pretty ambitious already!) and finally we tried to create little verses by ourselves such as an individual invitation to a birthday party, for example.

Yes! Poems are still alive and have a lot to give. What a wide field, inviting to continue!

A Merry Christmas to all of you and – by the way:  don’t forget to re-read the favorite Christmas poems of your own childhood. And – want to bet?  You still know many of them by heart.C