Ask almost anyone child in England who is learning German at school and there is one thing that they can tell you about German schools: they don’t have school uniforms.

Whilst some may like the sound of this more liberal attitude towards clothing, for the children it can mean the hard decision of what to wear each day, with conflicts arising among peers over designer labels, colours, and so on.

This, coupled with the fact that Germany has a general problem with uniforms anyway as a result of its past, meant that it was never going to be easy to introduce one into German schools.

But some are trying it out, and one of them is not far from us.  The new Grammar School in Rüsselsheim has opted for a “standard school clothing” rather than a “school uniform”, consisting of a standard blue T-Shirt, pop shirt, jumper with hood and a jacket.  A set costs around 90EUR.

Actually school T-Shirts are nothing new, but most children only have one that comes out for special occasions.  This extension of that idea may be sufficiently flexible (and “non-uniform”?) to catch on.

When my daughter started school in Germany, she was given a traditional Schultüte – a cone which is filled with useful things like stationary and books, and also some less useful things like sweets.

Time seems to have flown by since then, as that was 200 days ago!

When I first blogged about this particular tradition, I received a comment from a company called KinderCone in the USA that sells the same type of cones there – bringing the tradition to America.

Renewing the contact a few weeks ago, I found out that the cone is not just delivered empty (as in Germany), but also contains amongst other things a KinderJournal called “Me, Myself and First Grade”, and Vivian from KinderCone was kind enough to send my a copy to look at.

“Me, Myself and First Grade” is a journal of a child’s first year at school.  It starts by introducing Karli the Cat, who accompanies the child through the book.

Each page contains an activity for the child to do, which in turn documents that precious first year.  The text is kept simple, and there is a mixture of spaces to write in, boxes to tick and pictures to draw.  I particularly liked the idea of the space for writing your name – one box for the beginning of the year, and one for the end so that you can compare how the handwriting has improved.

So not only does a child practise writing in a book that will be special for the rest of their life, but it also gets them to think about their time at school: what are they good at?  What do they like best at school?  Everything that they read and do is positive.  There is even a special page to celebrate the first 100 days of school.

It’s the sort of book that I would like to see available in Germany, except that I’ve never seen anything like it here.

A word of warning to British readers: the book is obviously written for the US market, so expect words like “grade”, “recess” and “candy” (for school year, break and sweets).  I would also point out that the story about how the Schultüte came into being is not something that everyone in Germany agrees on, and the book – understandably – only gives one version of the story.

But all of that probably doesn’t matter to the children.  For them it is a nice surprise on their first day of school, and it’s nice to see a local tradition spreading to another part of the World.

Remember, the book is included when you buy a KinderCone, so if you want one you’ll have to go to the KinderCone shop.

With my daughter learning to read and write at primary school in Germany, it is interesting to see which methods are being used.  It often leaves me wondering if I learnt by similar methods, or whether it is a completely different system.

Letters are referred to by their phonetic sounds, so “b” is not “bee” but “buh”, at least for the first two years of primary school, and roughly one of these is covered each week.

I am particularly fascinated by the book that she uses to practise writing the letters in.  It looks almost like a musical stave, except it has less lines.  These correspond to the floors on a pictogram of a house that is at the side of the page.

Apparently, most of the lower-case letters all live downstairs, whilst some of them – and the upper case ones – also go upstairs.  Some letters even venture down into the basement!

I’m pretty sure I didn’t have houses at the end of the lines I was learning to write on…