Summer break from French - Yes or No???

Personally, I won't be having a break longer than 1 or 2 weeks max. from teaching my kids French. If you give your children a whole summer off from studying French, then they will likely have to relearn what they learned the previous school year. If you really feel your kids need a break from schooling, you could try to do 15-30 mins. a day and review/reinforce what they've already learned by doing some fun activities.

If mama needs a break, like I've said in the past, just pop in a disney movie and change it to French for the audio. If they complain, just say, "in French or nothing." I'm pretty sure they will choose to watch the movie in French.

Learning a language is not like riding a bike. Once you learn to ride a bike you never forget; however, with a language if you do not practice you can forget a lot of what you already learned.

Have a great summer!!! I will be posting some of our summer activities on this blog so be on the look-out!

Fruit salad

Wanna teach your kids some fruit words? Make a simple fruit salad and you have many opportunities to learn the fruit words and reinforce through the activity. You can practice as you buy the fruit at the supermarket, when you cut the fruit and when you all eat the fruit salad. A nice laid back way that you can buy fruit without the craziness of a superstore is to go to a farmer's market. This way you can take your time and learn all of the fruit. Here are some fruit vocabulary words:

une banane -----banana
une cerise ------cherry
un citron------- lemon
une fraise ------strawberry
une framboise --raspberry
une mûre -------blackberry
une myrtille ----blueberry
une orange -----orange
une pêche ------peach
une poire -------pear
une pomme -----apple
un raisin --------grape

Dot to Dots - practicing numbers in French

One great way of practicing numbers in French with your kids, especially higher numbers is by having them do dot to dots. Everytime they pass a number, make sure they say it in French. In no time they will be counting to 100.

Make sure to also spot check numbers out of order when you teach numbers because it's much easier to learn numbers in a sequence than out of order.

Here's a website with lots of free dot to dots that you can print out:

http://www.dottodots.net/

Short on time, double click on this image and print it out!

Birthday wishes in French!

Today is my birthday and it's a great time to focus on some French birthday vocabulary. I've tried to teach them some French birthday vocabulary on their own birthdays, but they are just too focused on parties and birthday presents to focus. So I thought my birthday would be a better idea.

Joyeux Anniversaire is the way you say Happy Birthday in French.

A simple song you can teach is sung to the same tune as Happy Birthday in English.

Joyeux anniversaire
Joyeux anniversaire
Joyeux anniversaire (add person's name here)
Joyeux anniversaire

Hopscotching numbers in French!

My 3 year old hasn't ever played Hopscotch before, so I decided to teach her today. Since she was new to the game I decided to just make it a French game from the start. We are only playing hopscotch in French.

As she jumps on each square I get her to say the numbers in French. My 6 year old loves this game as well. My 17 month old just tries to wipe away the chalk, but he's learning from hearing us play.

The more we play this game the more I'll introduce commands and phrases for them to learn in French.

Books in French and in English

Another good way to increase your child's vocabulary, especially school aged kids is to get some books that have the story in French and in English. Some people think that you should only get French books, but with the French/English books it may not intimidate your reader as much.

Also, you could do both. Get a few books that are only in French and some that are in both French and in English. I know Barnes and Noble has some, but you might have to ask someone where they are located because in our book store they were in a bottom corner of a shelf and I would've never found them if I didn't ask. Amazon has some as well or you could search on Ebay for some great deals from Canada.

Chalk Play

Learning French in a different environment from the kitchen table is always a good idea to me! One thing my son suggested this morning was to go outside and play with chalk on the sidewalk. Sounded like a great idea, but I also wanted to do a little French lesson, so we combined them. I wrote out some math problem and had him tell me what I wrote and what the answer was in French. Then we also goofed around and drew thing and had fun, but the whole time we made sure we used some of our French vocabulary for the colors and the names of our pictures. It was a great time and I'm sure we'll be doing this again.

Next time I think we'll do a little French hangman on the sidewalk. I think my oldest son will get a kick out if it.