Hi - can anyone recommend a short course (perhaps a month) or a teacher that freelances that is used to working with young children teaching them introductory German? We are in the position of being in temporary accommodation until we find a permanent apartment and await our shipping contents so I am unable to enroll them in school yet. They are 6 and 8. Thanks very much

Are you sure that they can't start school - some areas they have special 'integration' classes which are for a whole area, and so even if you move somewhere close to that area, they would stay there - the programme is often 6 months before they then go to their local school...

Hi Swisspea. Thanks for your reply. I am not absolutely sure no. I need to check further but we will be based in Seefeld area until we find a place and we ideally would like to live in Uetikon am See or Meilen area so not quite sure what we do. This could take a while. We have temporary accommodation until the end of November should we need it that long.

If you are registered, as you need to be if one of you is already working here, then it is very strange that the Gemeinde has not inquired about why your children are not attending school? Or have they? By law children must attend school. Unless you told them you were home schooling.

The local schools I am most familar with maintain that the children are better off learning the German language in the village school rather than parents trying to give their children a head start with private instruction. In the past I had a lot of clients who wanted to use the summer before a move to try to help their kids get a better start and the schools advised against it saying it was better to start them off their way.

One thing to keep in mind, as I am sure you have discovered, October 1 is a major moving time and after that the next main moving date is not until April. Not sure how long you have been looking but there is not much around at the moment.

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