Testimonials from parents
"We find that our 5 year old son is learning English very fast with this method, just like a second mother tongue." F. Reischel, Oderding
"Personally it is important that my son is encouraged to learn in preschool as I believe children at this age learn very easily and playfully and without any pressure and this can only be beneficial to them for the future. I also like the concept of learning English like a mother tongue (by seeing and hearing) and not by translating." S. Sonn, Weilheim, Bavaria
"We find it especially positive that we can continue learning at home without any problem. It's just great for the whole family to play memory with English words." M. Schmid, Penzberg
I'm the mother of four children (8, 6, 4, 3 months) and I've been working for the past 1 1/2 years or so with my three older children on the English course "English with Maggie and Mike". I'm always completely enthralled by the material. The children come into contact with English in a playful and natural way. I'm a teacher myself and the diversity of this course is simply fascinating. The exercises and texts in the text and activity books are so interesting for children - firstly because of the vitality and genuineness of the dialogues and secondly due to the different types of exercises. My children simply love it. They particularly like the games and cards which they can colour in gradually and which we often play with. We use the CDs most of all. They are easy to understand and the dialogues with the English children are so authentic. They were recorded in England and so our children hear "real" English right from the start and not only the "Germanic" English the teacher speaks. The children listen to the songs very often. They sing and dance along to them. This makes them become quickly familiar with the English language. Tina Stümpfig, Oberstaufen
Experience with bilingual children
“Another language? Aren't you overstressing the children?!” We often hear this question when we say that our daughter is learning English. But we can answer this question with a categoric NO. Our 2 children (4 and 1 year old) have been brought up with two languages since they were born. They know "mammy's language", "daddy's language", and now, for the past six months, there is also "Rosa's language" (English with Rosa Wagner). For Alisa (4 yo) her third foreign language is a beautiful and interesting addition to her previous language development. Language for Alisa is very strongly linked to persons and she links each language system to this person. In our family she answers in the right language to each family member. She know exactly that things have different names but that they mean the same thing. The third language simply adds another term which is stored under "Rosa's language" . At the start of her life, we already used baby sign language with success and it allowed her to express herself and communicate at the age of nine months. All the other languages follow the pattern of expressing oneself in different systems. For our children growing up in several language systems is totally natural. But for us as parents, we have to pay attention that we don't let ourselves go and communicate with our children in a different language than the one we have chosen, otherwise the result will be just “gibberish” . It is often strenuous, even annoying at time, but it's well worth it and it is fascinating to see how simple children learn languages. Even after 8 lessons, our daughter recognised English when we were on holiday and she astounded us with the question whether this "woman" spoke the same way as "Rosa". It's fun seeing her learn. Aysel Colak, Alzenau
Experience with children
Question: "Do you like learning English and why?"
Kristina Schmid, 3 years old: "Yes because it's fun and I like playing with Maggie and Mike."
Alexandra Keller, 7 years old: "Yes because I will already be able to speak English when we learn it at school."
Ananda Wagner, 7 years old: Yes, then you can talk to children all over the world and you can make many new friends."
Philip Wentlandt, 8 years old: "Yes because we play great games in English."
Sara Wagner, 11 years old "English is my favourite subject. Although I already had 4 years of English in our HappyYoungLearning School before I went to secondary school, I'm not bored during the English lessons. On the contrary, I'm already familiar with English and now all I need to do is to learn the spelling and the grammar."
Nadja, 6 years old: "I like learning English because you can make yourself understood everywhere and it's really cool.“
Carmen, 4 years old: "I like learning English because it's so great.“
Experiences in kindergartens
I was first introduced to this project by a colleague in our church group and was amazed at the vitality of the learning units and how quickly children assimilated the language - it's not a rigid teaching programme but a set of helpful ideas. Since January 2005, I have been teaching the project with school beginners for periods of up to six months. The children love being "English Kid", they do a little homework (together with their parents or siblings) until the next lesson. In the hall there are always two new words or terms on the wall for repetition and reinforcement. The cost of the learning materials for half a year is one off and affordable and it is necessary for reinforcement. All preschool children are permitted to learn English. If parents have financial difficulties, a support association helps our day-care centre, or you too Mrs Wagner. I can only encourage people to start this project. I use if also at parties and fetes. The children often greet me in English, even the tiny tots in the group - numbers, colours, animals, and so on and they are really looking forward to being "English Kid" soon. As I said, I like working with your materials and I am supported by the Maggie and Mike had puppets and our Tilly. Gaby Fleary, Minden
Experiences by teaching staff
Every Tuesday is the day when it's time to say "Let’s play English with Maggie and Mike". The systematic and structured concept of the Happy Young Learning language school was developed by primary school teacher Rosa Wagner. The learning content is taught and repeated in English using real objects, flashcards, dialogues, role plays and games all in English. We teach, demonstrate and play everything actively with the children. They learn quickly by question and answer, expressing themselves in simple sentences and communicating with each other. I totally love working with this concept because it achieves enormous learning success in a very short time. It's always fun to see the children's enthusiasm to play and sing along during lessons. It is an immense joy for me every time to see the children's eyes beaming full of pride when they tell me they can speak English much better than Mum and Dad. Because they didn't know that "Eidechse" in English is called a "lizard". Jutta Seitz, Strullendorf