Petit Papa Noël ...

With this Friday's toddler session falling on the last day of November, I decided that I would start off our run of Christmas songs and activities with an advent calendar craft.  I came across a great Father Christmas one, I will give more details in a minute, and this then meant we needed a song about  Père Noël himself.

The trouble then came with which song to choose.  Did I go for a traditional French Christmas song - which would be a little tricky for our toddlers to join in with but would be authentic.  Or did I go for a simplified song about the man himself fitted to a well known tune that everyone would have a chance of joining in with over the next few weeks?

It was a really difficult one.  I wanted to stay true to France by choosing a proper Christmas song, but equally I wanted Little Imp and her friends to be able to join in themselves with the singing.  I would love her to be singing Christmas in both English and French this year!

After much deliberation and listening to plenty of songs I decided that we would have 2 new songs this week.  For our traditionally French tune, I chose the children's favourite of "Petit Papa Noël".  I love this song, the lyrics are so sweet and it is such a gentle song - I can see it becoming a bedtime song for the next few weeks for Little Imp.  As it is rather long though and the vocabulary quite complicated for our little learners, I cut it down to the first verse and the chorus, which are as follows:

C’est la belle nuit de Noël

La neige étend son manteau blanc

Et les yeux levés vers le ciel

À genoux, les petits enfants

Avant de fermer les paupières

Font une dernière prière.

Refrain:

Petit Papa Noël

Quand tu descendras du ciel

Avec des jouets par milliers

N’oublie pas mon petit soulier

Mais avant de partir

Il faudra bien te couvrir

Dehors tu vas avoir si froid

C’est un peu à cause de moi

 
Then for our break from tradition and our "sing-a long" song, with some simple Christmas vocabulary, we sang to the tune of  Frère Jacques:

Papa Noël, Papa Noël,
où est tu?, où est tu?

Je suis dans le traîneau, je suis dans le traîneau,

Ding, dang, dong, ding, dang, dong!

Petit cadeau, petit cadeau,

où est tu?, où est tu?
Je suis dans la chausette, Je suis dans la chausette,
Ding, dang, dong, ding, dang dong!

As i said, our craft this week was a Father Christmas advent calendar.  I found the idea and the template on the kaboose website here: http://crafts.kaboose.com/santas-beard-advent-calendar.html

I printed the templates out onto card and then found all the red materials that we had in the craft box - tissue paper, felt, net, crepe paper, card, pipe cleaners, foam, pom poms, etc. which the children could use for the red part of Santa's hat.  I also put out green materials for the holly leaves and cotton wool for the white trim on the hat.  There were the usual colouring pens and glitter glues for extra decoration.

The idea is to decorate Santa's hat and face but leave the beard with the numbered circles blank.  During Advent, you then glue one cotton wool ball onto the beard each day and by Christmas Eve you have a completed picture.

Here is how we got on:

 

Happy singing and crafting! :o)