From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I can’t do arithmetic. Sancha tries to help me when I am at home but she can’t do it either. Grandfather always starts to help me but then I beg him to sing German songs to me instead and at first he says he won’t. He tells me that certain hours are for work, and certain ones for singing and this was still a working hour but he always ends up doing it and I know the words to some of the songs and we end up singing together. Arithmetic is so difficult and I have silly problems like Farmer Brown’s cow gives one gallon of milk and Farmer White’s cat had eight kittens so how long does it take Farmer Green’s chickens to lay a hundred eggs a day and how long is Farmer Black’s fence? Why all these farmers?

As I read today’s entry, I like to think that Hilda and her grandfather are singing songs from the book my grandmother sent her from Vienna when Hilda was a child. Hilda mentions this book in a 1946 letter to Helene.