…sing along! This post is dedicated to Oscar, who came all the way from Germany to see us in February. (His mum Grit, a former flat mate of mine, tagged along too.)
Oscar has been learning some songs in English, and their visit was punctuated by spontaneous “If you’re happy and you know it” singing sessions. Two on the Royal Mile, on separate days, one on the way up Arthur’s Seat (if I remember rightly for the last day).
What was nice was a) getting a sense of when Oscar was enjoying himself, by his choice of song and b) seeing the reactions from passersby. One couple clearly thought this was a good idea and joined in one occasion. But for me, the fun was also seeing Edinburgh from the perspective of a 5 year old boy, and enjoying all the spontaneity, singing included, that that allowed for.
Oscar was occasionally unsure of what he was actually singing…”Slap you sigh…” turned out to be [if you’re happy and you know it] slap your thigh! But his number skills in English were well developed, allowing for some good bus number spotting when heading into town, and we all got by in a mixture of English and German (a bit of a treat for me too, that way).
We took in tourist attractions, to be sure, but also identified car types on the road, collected shells from the beach and strung them together, discovered a sea slug which was iridescent, played some card games, posed for LOTS of photos, tried bilingual bedtime stories (having the same book in two languages), and engaged in significant role play while climbing Arthur’s Seat, following orders from General Oscar. I was certainly happy…and thankfully, I think our visitors were too.
Very impressed that Oscar could count up to 40+ in English. What a joy to spend time with him (and Grit of course). Any excuse to pull the toy boxes out and spread the cars out over the living room carpet.