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Print the 12 month calendar Tim Newlin of TimTim.com has designed especially for the Teachers.Net community! It’s a multilingual, multinational calendar you can print and use with students from grade preschool through 12, or to keep track of your own busy schedule.

Each page of the calendar features Tim’s whimsical drawing of a scene representing a different nation – one for each month of the year. Featured in each drawing is a group of critters set in a scene representing that nation, with the animals’ sounds spelling out in the language of that country. The animal translations are how the animal sounds are written in the language of that country.

Says Newlin, “We all know that animals sound the same - a pig sounds the same on a Danish farm as it does on an American farm, but I found out how funny it was while I was traveling about Europe to read these barking and meowing and mooing sounds as they were written in the various languages, and kids here in Denmark thought it was funny to hear how they "read out" the sounds. The weirdest of all the sounds is of course the Greek ones that are written in the Greek alphabet.

About the scenes artist Newlin drew for each nation: “I also tried as much as possible to capture the essence of the country with the drawings. Germany was in the process of re-unification so I used the famous Brandenburg Gate; France is famous for food so I used a scene in a kitchen; Holland is famous for its dikes. Luxembourg is famous for how small and so full of banks, Spain for its flamingo dancers, Portugal for its fishing and beaches, Italy is world cup holder in soccer and the Catholic church is so powerful there. Denmark is known for the little mermaid and Vikings, Greece for its Islands and ancient buildings and acropolis.

“Then of course there is the Irish Blarney Stone and the famous Pot of Gold that the leprechauns keep hidden somewhere and the fact that in Luxembourg, Belgium and France they do speak French but each with its own dialect… therefore the animal sounds as written are a bit different. Belgium is, of course, the seat of the EU government most of the time and that's why I had all the animals around the conference table discussing farm subsidies - which is a major part of the EU budget and what really keeps all these very diverse countries with their many languages and cultures bound together in a common goal of European unity.”

Tim Newlin
Creator of TimTim.com - Free Drawings for Classroom Use

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