A French Open House

It’s that time of year where schools have Open Houses so that the teachers can meet the parents and the teachers can show off their class projects. Why not have your own little French Open House? You can take all of your activities you’ve complete in the past few weeks/months and hang them all around the room. Then, when your spouse comes home, you can proceed to have your impromptu French Open House. This is a good way to get the other parent involved and get you your much needed approval. Well, at least for me, I really like the affirmation I receive from my husband when I’ve show him the projects we’ve been working on in our French school. And this French Open House will also help your child to see everything they have accomplished over the weeks and they can get extra praise from their other parent. Single mom or dad? No problem, have grandma, grandpa or a close friend over for a snack or dinner and then you have a captive audience. You can even have a French themed snack or dinner by serving crepes or even just a cheese tray. Your options are limitless.

Painting toast in French!

Painting toast is something my kids like to do. You can throw a little French in it and then you have a French lesson.

All you have to do is melt some butter and put a tad bit of food coloring in it. After you toast the bread, you can put it on a plate and let your kids paint their toast. You can have them say the colors in French as they paint their breakfast.

Cribbage anyone?

This is such a random spur of the moment game I played with my 4 year old daughter today. She found an old cribbage board I had laying around and wanted to play. I didn't feel up to teaching her how to play cribbage, so instead I turned it into a French counting game. I was the blue peg and she was the red peg. I would tell her how many spaces she could go in French and she would count in French as she hopped into each hole. Then she did the same to me. Obviously she won because she kept giving me low numbers and I gave her high numbers because I wanted her to practice larger numbers in French, but it was really a lot of fun.

If you have never seen a cribbage board or don't know what it is, then this post will probably make no sense to you, but if you do have one laying around, it really is a fun way to pass the time on a lazy summer day.

Il court, le furet

If you want to teach your children a great and fairly easy song in French, here is one of my personal favorites: Il court, le furet. Here is a site that has the lyrics and it is also sung by a native speaker.

http://www.hello-world.com/French/song/furet.php

My kids listened to the song so much they are singing this song constantly (as am I).

Creating a French picture dictionary

One useful way to help your little French learners retain the vocabulary words they have learned is to have them create a little French picture dictionary. Any spiral notebook or something like that will do. If your kids can write, they can write the words and then draw a picture. If they can't write yet, you can write the words, but still have them draw the pictures next to it.

This exercise will help your kids gain ownership of their learning and they will be proud to show their dictionary to grandma and grandpa, I'm sure.

This is especially useful if your kids are at the reading age, but even if they aren't, it's a good way to help you remember what words in French you have taught your kids.

And then there are other things...

This is a continuation of the post from yesterday...
Then there are other things that interest my son. Currently it is plants (before it was trains and cars). He likes to plant seeds, watch them grow and harvest them. I think he could hang out at his little garden for most of the day, which is too long for me. However, if I add a little French to the gardening, then it makes everyone happy.

With plants, you can learn basic planting vocabulary, colors, planting verbs, numbers to count your flowers, fruits and vegtables. Really the ideas are limitless.

Here are some vocabulary words:

The hoe - la binette
The rake - le râteau
The shovel - le pelle
The spade - la bêche
The trowel - le transplantoir
The fork - la fourche
The pruning shears - les cisailles
The hedge shears - le sécateur
The hedgecutter - la tailleuse de haie
The grass shears - les tondeurs
The axe - la hache
The mower - la tondeuse
The wheelbarrow - la brouette

To dig - foncer
To hoe - biner
To plant - planter
To water the plants - arroser les plantes
To cultivate - cultiver
To prune - élaguer
To weed - désherber
To mow - tondre

These great lists were found on this website: http://www.brighthub.com/education/languages/articles/35788.aspx

Run with what you got

Not sure where to start this school year with French for you preschoolers or homeschooled kids? Why not just start with what they like and run with that?

My daughter is really into tea parties, so we like to practice French while having a tea party. My son is not big into tea parties, after all he "is 6 and is not a girl." But, what little 6 year old boy can resist some milk and cookies for the tea party? Not my son. Since a tea party is very prim and proper we practiced our polite French words like:

de rien - please
s'il vous plait - please
merci - thank you
excuse me - excusez-moi

We also tried to stick with French for the entire tea party, which was hard. So, if it gets too tough just stick with saying French for a few things to start with. The key is to keep the kids happy and interested.