This is aimed to all mothers (or mothers to be) who have recently arrived to the germanic Switzerland.

I arrived 2 years ago and for me it was very valuable to attend to a MuKi Deutsch course (MuKi is the short form for "Mutter und Kind" so it is German for Mother and Child). I did it in Bern but I know there are courses like that in Basel and Zürich (at least), you just need to go to your gemeinde and query about it. You might even be welcomed to attend to another gemeinde (if you can get there in time for lessons and there are places available - of course priority is given to residents of the gemeinde). The greatest thing is that you take your child along (no matter how young - but the setting is ideal for 3-5 year olds, younger than that and you will need to ask, because it will depend in the number of children there) and they learn through play while you are next door, in a proper classroom setting. In many cases you don't even need to take a child along (they might be already in school or you might be expecting it ) to take part.

The aim of the course is to provide you enough German:

• For a better communication with your neighbours.
• To get more information about life in Switzerland.
• For a better support of your children going to school and kindergarden.
• To get to know the Swiss schoolsystem and to be able to talk with the teacher or the kindergarden teacher about your children.

I took the above from: http://www.koeniz.ch/xml_1/internet/.../d314/f322.cfm, but I can tell it was very useful to me. I also did various "high street" language courses (a lot more expensive) but none addressed the pointers above and the MuKi courses did.

As I said, just go to your gemeinde and ask whether they provide a similar course if you are interested. Hope this is of help!