TGV Trains!

My son loves trains, as I'm sure your son does. If he does, I'm sure you'll love this web site I'm posting a link to below!! It's really neat. They have paper models that you can make of the TGV trains. You can print out the parts of the train and then you put together. They are small, so you'll probably have to do the majority of the work, but I'm sure you'll son (or daughter) would love to play with the trains afterwards.

You can take this opportunity to teach them about the TGV trains in France. It's always good to teach a little cutlure during your language classes. TGV stands for: Train à Grande Vitesse. It means high speed train.

Here's a link to a wiki about TGVs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV

Here's the link to the site where you can make your own TGV trains:

http://www.trainweb.org/tgvpages/papermodels.html

Easter Vocabulary and pressed flower cards

You can make fun Easter or Spring cards with your child and practice French. One great way is to press flowers (when they start to bloom) and then glue them to a card. You and your child can practice French color and Spring words while you are picking the flowers, as well as making the cards!

Here are some Easter words in French that might be helpful to you over the next few weeks:

Easter - le Pâques

Spring - le printemps

the egg - l'oeuf

the rabbit - le lapin

the flower - la fleur

Easter Egg Hunt!

Easter is still far away, but we have already broken out the Easter eggs and have been having a few hunts. There was nothing in the eggs, the kids just like to find them. Today I decided to do something different. I took 24 plastic eggs and put 12 pairs of pictures in them. 1 in each egg. So, after the egg hunt, my children got to open them up and match the pairs.

Today I just quickly drew pictures of body parts and threw them in there, but you could use pictures of anything you want to teach your children.

A varation on this is to do a traditional memory game where they can open 2 eggs at a time. If the pictures match, they can keep the drawings out, but if they don't match, then they have to put the pictures back and try again.

This is a very fun way to get your children interested in learning French and you can play it over and over during the next several weeks.

Playing Cars and Learning French

Here’s a fun little activity you can do with your son (or daugther) if they have lots of little hot wheel type cars like my son does. You can practice saying colors and using “Je vois…” (I see), when doing the activity.

What you will need:
masking tape
little cars

What to do:
1. Make a little track and parking areas on a piece of carpet. (Before you do this, make sure to try it out to see if the tape will come off easily. Also, don’t leave the tape on too long, so you can easily pull it off.)
2. Have your son group all of the cars together by color in different parking areas. You can also group them by any other characteristic like size.
3. As you play together you can say things like “Je vois les voitures bleues” (I see the blue cars). Or simply “voitures bleues” (blue cars).

Pep Talk

I think we all need to hear from time to time that we are doing a good job as being a parent/teacher/role-model for our children. So, I'm here to let you know that you are doing a good job. I know that teaching a foreign language to your children is difficult because you, like me, have a ton of things you have to do around the house like landry and making dinner.

Just try to do the best you can and run with it. Be proud of the results you see. If your child says 'Merci' after you give them their dinner, know that you made that happen!

Look at your French wall or your child's French journal and know that you are expanding their knowledge in a foreign language, YOU! So, now pat yourself on the back and keep on teaching.

And remember my secret for days when you are sick and you can't teach any French. Throw in a DVD with a French track and let them watch that while you rest. You have to take care of yourself!

Buying French children books

A lot of times it is hard to find French children books in the USA. You can find some on Amazon and some at your local Barnes and Nobles, but another great place to find them is on Ebay. Lots of times they are shipped from Canada, so you might have to pay a little extra shipping, but you can find some good deals if you look for them.

Also, if your children like comic books, Archie prints their comic books in French in Canada and you can order them and have them shipped to your house. You can contact the Archie distributor in Canada for more information.

Some good French children books my kids like are Oui Oui (which is Noddy in English), the French version of Dora (odd because instead of teaching you Spanish, they teach you English, but the bulk of the books are in French), and their favorite is Franklin.

Making your own French Flashcards

One way to practice French with children is by using flashcards. A better way to practice French, in my opinion, is by having your children make their own flashcards.

There are a few different ways you can do this. First of all, you can buy some white index cards or cut out rectangles from construction paper. Then, you can either have your children draw pictures on the cards of the things you want them to remember in French. (By having them draw a smile on the card, your child will remember exactly what it is that picture is supposed to mean - happy (or smile), whatever the word was that you told them to draw.) Or, you can have them cut out pictures from a magazine and they can glue them to the cards. Either way they are thinking of the word in French as they draw or cut out pictures. This will help them to remember the word better, especially if they are a visual learner.

You can have your children continue to make their own flashcards when you teach them new vocabulary, then you can review all of the flashcards whenever you feel it is necessary.

A Tea Party for Deux!

A really fun way to practice greetings and small talk in French is to have your daughter (or son) have a tea party with their stuffed animals. They can say 'bonjour' (hello), 'Comment ça va?' (How's it going?) and other phrases to their stuffed animals or dolls. You can even speak for their dolls by speaking French back to them. My daughter really likes it when I pretend to be her dolls.

If you want to get your son in the action, just make it a real tea party with cookies and milk and I'm sure he'll come to the party and participate!

Here are some more phrases you can use at the tea party:

ça va bien - It's going well

ça va mal - It's going poorly
comme-çi comme ça - so-so
s’il vous plaît - please

merci - thank you

de rien - you're welcome

Hopscotch and French!

About 10 o'clock in the morning, my kids start to go nuts. It's too early for lunch and it's too late to be calm and 1/2 asleep. So, we usually go outside and play some kind of game. Today, my daughter wanted to play hop scotch and without my coaxing, she played it in French!

I know that there is still a lot of snow on the ground up North, so you can keep this idea in your back pocket for the Spring. All you have to have is a flat sidewalk and some chalk. Your kids can practice saying their French numbers as you draw it or you can have them draw it themselves and say the numbers in French. Then, you can play it with a pebble, where they throw it on a number and they don't hop on that square. As they land on the other squares they can say that number in French.

Here's a variation if you really want to switch things up. You can make the square in different colored chalk and you can even put the numbers in the wrong order. That way they aren't counting up and they will have to remember the exact number in French.

Duck, Duck, Goose for French!

A friend of mine told me about this variation to Duck, Duck, Goose for learning French. You and your children can sit in a circle like normal. One person stands up and taps everyone on the head as they walk by, and instead of saying "Duck", they say, "Bonjour!"(hello) And instead of saying "Goose," they say, "Au revoir!" (goodbye).

Whoever they say "Au revoir" to then jumps up and chases the other person around the circle trying to touch them before their spot is taken.

The great thing about this, is that you can modify the game to teach any pair words in French like, "merci" (thank you) and "de rien" (you're welcome).

Puppets!

My daughter is often very shy and doesn't like to talk when I want her to speak French. It's not that she doesn't know how to do it, she just is shy. Today, we spent the morning making different kinds of puppets. Then, afterwards she and I had conversations with our puppets in French. By using a puppet a lot of shyness vanished. And we had a great time at the same time.
Even if your kids aren't shy, it's still a great way to practice French and change things up a bit !

You can make sock puppets, paper bag puppets, paper plate puppets, or a gazillion other types of puppets. This site has a lot of directions for various puppets:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/toddler/

Papillons and French!

Papillons (butterflies) used to be my son’s favorite word in French. So, I thought I’d revisit it and do an activity with papillons.

What you need:

clothespins
tissue paper
markers or crayons
googgle eyes (if you have them)
glue or tape
pipe cleaner

What to do:
1. Help your child cut out tissue paper to make papillon wings. They can make them oval, heart shape or any shape they like.

2. Have your child color patterns on the wings. As they color the patterns, they can say the names of the colors in French.

3. Tape or glue the wings onto the clothespin. Or you can just stick the paper inside the clothespin.

4. Glue eyes or draw eyes on the clothespin.

5. Use pipe cleaners to form the antennae. They can also decorate it with glitter.
6. Then, you can clip the papillon to various locations around the house and play a game where your child has to find the papillon. When they spot it, they can say, “Je vois un papillon.”

French Alphabet

It's so cute when a child learns how to sing the Alphabet Song in English. It's even cuter when they can sing it in French.

Here's a YouTube video which will help practicing the alphabet sounds in French:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le61vibW25Y&feature=related

Then after they learn the letters, they can sing the ABC song in French!

It's very hard to write the phonetics for French words, but I thought it would be useful for some people to have a guide when teaching their kids the French alphabet. This is just my interpretation, not a text book version.

A- aah

B-bay

C-say

D-day

E-euh (This one is a bit difficult for me to transcribe.)

F-eff

G-jay

H-ash

I-ee

J-jee

K-kah

L-el

M-ehm

N-ehn

O-oh

P-pay

Q- keu

R-air (roll tongue a bit)

S-ess

T- tay

U-oo

V-vay

W-doobluh-vay

X- eekz

Y-eegrek

Z- zed

Making Valentine's Day cards and learning French!

Today we spent our time making St. Valentine's Day cards. Sure it's easy to go to Wal-mart and buy a bunch for a few bucks, but it was more fun this way and a great learning experience for the kids. We made sponge heart cards. I cut out sponges in the shapes of hearts and had all of the different paint colors on different plates. I made them speak French while they were stamping their hearts on the cards. They said things like, "J'ai un cœur bleu." (I have a blue heart.)

After the paint on the cards dried, I got the children to practice their printing. My oldest son is now 6, so it wasn't a problem for him, but I helped my 4 year old a bit with hers. They wrote, "Je t'aime!" (I love you) on the cards right above the painted hearts.

It was a very successful French lesson!

Shapes and Colors in French for Kids

Here's an activity you can do with your children to teach them shapes and colors. You can introduce the French shape words and then they can go on a scavenger hunt around your house to find things that are 'cercle' shaped or 'ovale' shaped. When they bring you back and item you can ask them to say the shape in French.

As a review the French shape words the next day or to reinforce the above activity at any time, you can use the worksheet on the side of this page. This worksheet can be used with all ages of kids. If you use it with your preschoolers, you'll have to help them read the French words.

Here are some French shape vocabulary words to get you started:
le carré - the square
le cercle - the circle
le cœur - the heart
le rectangle - the rectangle
le losange - the diamond
l’ovale - the oval

Making Crêpes and learning about the French Culture

It's important for me that my children learn a lot about the culture of the various countries which speak French. Today we focused on France, an obvious choice. One of the things I loved most about France when I lived there was its food. YUM!

Today we made crêpes. It was a lot of fun; however it took me awhile to make a decent crêpes. At first they were too thick. Finally, I looked online and found this good videoa about making crêpes.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1DgmbMMOgA

We put lots of yummy things inside our crêpes: raspberry jam, chocolate and nutella. We put whipped cream on top as well. The kids had a great time filling and eating the crêpes. Be creative with your crêpes, the sky is the limit!

Slap Jack and learning your numbers in French

As I was saying yesterday it's important for your children to practice their numbers in a variety of contexts and out-of-order, so that they will know them inside and out. Lot's of kids can count to 10 in another language, but it's imporant to be able to say 6 without having to count up to 6.

Today my daughter asked me to play Slack Jack for the 50th time this week. I love playing cards, but I thought it was time I made it a bit more educational. I told her that from now on if we play it she has to say all of the number cards that she flips over in French. It was a complete success and we had a great time.

For those of you who don't know how to play slap jack, this is how it is played. You can play with as many people as you want, but if you play it the French game you may want to stick to 2 players. Deal out all cards evenly to everyone who is playing. Then, all together you flip a card over. (This is where I had my daughter say the number in French.) If there is a Jack, then the first person who slaps it wins all of the cards that are turned over. I felt like there weren't enough Jacks in our deck, so we made Jokers to be like Jacks and we could slap those too.

Making handprints to learn numbers in French

One simple fun way to teach your children their numbers in French is to make some handprints on papers with fingerpaint. After they dry, you can hang them up on the fridge and count the fingers in French once a day to review the numbers.

Not into messy painting? A different way to achieve the same result is to trace your children's hands on a piece of paper and then label each finger with a number.

Remember when teaching the French numbers to your children to mix it up and have them count backwards. This will help them to learn their numbers in French without having to count up to a certain number.

10 - dix

9 - neuf

8 - huit

7 - sept

6 - six

5 - cinq

4 - quatre

3 - trois

2 - deux

1 - un