CarlyD wrote:On the language front, I'm currently in a war with Duolingo over their Dative section, in which I'm determined to get my 5 crowns and they're determined to make me crazy. At the moment, they're winning.
The Dative is as easy as the other three cases.
What I really, really recommend would be to gather a (small) collection of example sentences. No matter if they are taken from The Mean Green Owl or from elsewhere. Then you could underline any Die Vier Fälle words, and their prepositions/etc. (if applicable).
If I would be doing something like this (related to another Case Language), I'd color-code the different cases. And as for the prepositions, I would use the same color (or black / gray) for all of them. Unless I knew for sure that a specific preposition only would be used for one case, rather than two or even more. And knowing that for sure isn't always that easy.
Revising some sentences like these can be much more helpful than simply memorizing some usage examples. Because while there is some In-Language Logic to these cases, it isn't something that already becomes clear at first glance. It is hidden below the tip of the iceberg, rather than above. That's why it can be mixed up easily when trying to Rote Memorize it. Don't know your method, but just saying. What has been described in this post is what I did with Spanish (in a similar way) to understand these prepositions and conjunctions some more.