Here in Brisbane, the lack of rain is one of the easiest conversation openers. Summer temperatures persist and any attempt at gardening is hard work. I had a passionfruit vine seedling come up in one of my few surviving herb pots and since I love eating passionfruit and the stubborn thing had resisted being eaten by the possums so far, I thought it deserved a chance to live. Digging a decent hole in clay is always hard, but when I'd made an indentation, I tipped rinse water from the washing in to soften the soil. Like putting water into a concrete bucket! An hour later, and the water level had still barely gone down. Anyway, I chipped away at it over the course of the afternoon and hopefully the pile of compost I mixed in will help the keen plant to make a go of living.

Farmers proverbs offer us wisdom from the other hemisphere. Looking at this month's collection, this one rang particularly true: "Erst Mitte Mai ist der Winter vorbei." These pithy sayings are generally made memorable through the rhyming words in the middle and end. Apart from advising us in our farming/gardening pursuits, how can they be used in the classroom?

Pronunciation practice, analysis of rhyming syllables (particularly with different spellings, like in the example above), dictation races, cultural comparisons, vocabulary development (particularly for months and weather words), lesson openers while taking a class roll, lesson finishers if there are five minutes spare - you may have other ideas as well. I've written a couple of interactive exercises to demonstrate some of these.

It you would like further ideas for classroom use, see the Bauernrallye board game and worksheets produced by the Goethe Institut.