coccinelle, demoiselle...

Last Friday's session introduced the comptine "Coccinelle demoiselle" a French nursery rhyme about ladybirds. 

As is often the case with nursery rhymes there are several versions, generally it is just a case of the colours being in a different order.  Anyway, for the version that  we sang the lyrics were as follows:

Coccinelle, demoiselle,

Bête à Bon Dieu,

Coccinelle, demoiselle,

Vole jusqu'aux cieux.

Petit point blanc

Elle attend.

Petit point rouge

Elle bouge.

Petit point noir

Coccinelle au revoir!

To accompany the song, our craft this week involved making our own ladybird hats. 

To make one of your own you will need,
a long strip of card (well long enough to wrap around your little ones head)
red collage materials - we had a variety including felt, paper, tissue paper, crepe paper, foam, ribbon, shiny paper, etc
black paper,
spot stickers,
a pipe cleaner,
a pencil,
a stapler

First make 2 holes in the top centre of the strip of card and thread the pipe cleaner through.  Wrap each end of the pipe cleaner around the pencil to make the twisty antennae shape.

Use the red collage materials you have to cover the cardboard.

Cut a semi circle out of the black paper and glue onto the cardboard below the antennae for the ladybird's face.  Add a face using googly/sticker eyes, felt pens/glitter glue etc.

Give your ladybird some spots using the spot stickers.

Wrap your cardboard around to make a hat shape and staple at the right size for you little one's head.

Here are ours to give you some ideas:

Happy singing and crafting! :O)

Preschool session 9 - les animaux et les couleurs

Time seems to be flying by so quickly at the moment, that end of summer term round of cello concerts, sports days, dance shows... I can't believe how far behind I am with keeping the blog updated!  I will give a quick overview of what we did in the Preschool groups last week here, then update with last week's toddler session.  Then I will try to get back on track this weekend with a proper post about this week's preschool session which will be the final one before the summer break.

So, last week we were continuing with our theme of animals and colours based around the story ours brun, dis-moi.  We sang the songs we have been learning over the last few weeks - "Dans la ferme de Macdonald", "Tourne tourne petit moulin", "Deux petits oiseaux", "Peux tu marcher comme un canard" and "Baa baa mouton noir".  Again, we expanded on Baa Baa by adding extra verses as the children chose different colours for the sheep to be.

We played a game with the coloured beanbags, throwing and catching and calling out the colours - the children are all gaining in confidence in naming the colours in French and are really good at recognising the French names if I call for "vert" for example the child with the green beanbag will throw it to me, more often than not accompanied by the other children shouting "A. has it!"

I introduced a new game in this session as well which proved a big big hit - so popular in fact that we had to play it twice and had there been more time the children would have loved to play it again, I have promised we will play it at this week's session :o)  The game is one I am sure you are familiar with - matching pairs.  I made some cards of the animals in the story, so a brown bear, yellow duck, etc.  I then cut these in half so that the children have to find the matching heads and tails of the animals.  We sat in a circle and each child took it in turns to turn two cards over - if the cards matched they got to keep them, if not they had to turn them back over.  However, to get us practicing the French vocabulary they also had to name either the colours they had turned over or the animals.  On our second game, they had a go at naming both.  Such a simple game and one that could easily be adapted to introduce French vocabulary with any matching pairs game I'm sure - Little Imp has a game that matches the animal to it's baby and this is great fun to play in French or English.

I read the children a new story about animals, the wonderful "Cher Zoo" (Dear Zoo) by Rod Campbell.  The children enjoyed the story and I was thrilled that some of them were able to join in with "grenouille" (frog) and all were able to join in with "chien" (dog) - the animals that we have come across in Ours brun over the past few weeks.  As well as listening to the story, we also spoke about the various colours of the animals and the boxes and crates that they are hiding under.  You can find my review of this book here: http://www.frenchfortoddlers.blogspot.co.uk/p/book-reviews.html 
And an idea for a dear zoo craft activity here: http://www.frenchfortoddlers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/cher-zoo.html

The next session will be the final one on this topic and the final one before the summer break.  The children will all be bringing home their end of topic certificates and also their progress reports. 

Wishing you a fun week of French! :o)

Preschool session 8 - les animaux et les couleurs

I seem to be way behind on my blog posts at the moment, tomorrow will be the 9th preschool session and I still haven't written about the 8th or last week's toddler session!

So, last week's preschool session (number 8) continued with the themes of colours and animals and we repeated the songs and activities from the previous 2 weeks, including dans la ferme de macdonald, baa baa mouton noir and peux-tu marcher comme un canard and playing various games with the beanbags and schleich animals.

I introduced a new song to the group "Tourne tourne petit moulin".  I chose this song as it is nice and simple and repetitive and does include a bird and a fish so fits the animal topic.  It is a firm favourite at our toddler session and I hope that it will become one with the preschoolers too.

The lyrics (and actions) are as follows:

Tourne, tourne, petit moulin,   (roll arms)
Frappent, frappent, petites mains,    (clap hands)
Vole, vole petit oiseau,    (make hands into a bird)
Nage, nage, poisson dans l'eau (make hands into a fish)

Petit moulin a bien tourné
Petits mains ont bien frappé
Petit oiseau a bien volé
Petit poisson a bien nagé

We also played an animal colour bingo game which I had made for the children.  Each child had a bingo card (see top picture for Little Imp's card) and a pen, as I called the animals, e.g. poisson orange, they had to find them on their bingo card and cross them out or circle them.  The children focused well on this activity listening carefully for the animal names and colours and proudly pointing them out to me on their sheets before marking them off.

This week's session will continue with the same theme and hopefully I will get my post written a bit quicker! :o)

Preschool session 7 - les animaux et les couleurs

Last week's preschool session was still focused on the topics of animals and colours.  We started the session as usual with our bonjour song and asking one another "ça va?". 

I again read them the story of "Ours brun, dis-moi" and was impressed that they had remembered some of the animal names from the first session.  I introduced a couple more animals to the four from last week, namely le canard (duck) and l'oiseau (bird).  We played some games with Jacques (our puppet) where he hid one or more of the animals and the children had to guess in French which was missing. 

We sang "Baa baa mouton noir" again and I introduced a new song "Dans la ferme de Macdonald".  On our farm Old Macdonald had a sheep, a duck, a dog and also 2 new animals le cochon (pig) and la vache (cow).  As the tune is familiar and the lyrics very repetitive it did not take the children long to pick this song up and join in with me.  To view the lyrics and a related craft idea for this song, see my previous blog post here: http://www.frenchfortoddlers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/dans-la-ferme-de-macdonald-i-i-o.html

The only colours we had really looked at in the first week, aside from reading the story were noir and rouge (we sang baa baa mouton rouge) and so this session I introduced the remaining colours from the story:
bleu (blue)
jaune (yellow)
vert (green)
orange
blanc (white)
brun (brown)
violet (purple)
I introduced the colours using beanbags and we played a variety of games involving throwing and catching the beanbags and chanting the names of the colours.  Jacques was also involved in the games and as last week with the animal names kept getting the colours muddles and needed the children to correct him.

I gave the children a further 2 pages for their mini books to take home and colour in - un canard jaune and un oiseau rouge.

We then had a bit of a dance about sining "Peux-tu marcher comme un canard?" (Can you walk like a duck?) before singing our goodbyes.  You can find more details on this song and a related activity on my post here: http://frenchfortoddlers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/peux-tu-marcher-comme-un-canard.html

The next session will focus on some more animals and consolidating colours - and of course there will be another new song to sing!! :0)

Preschool session 6 - les animaux et les couleurs

After a week off for half-term, I was interested to see how much my little pre-schoolers would have remembered of what we had learnt over our first 5 sessions.  I was amazed to find them not only able to say "bonjour" and sing our bonjour song with their usual gusto but also easily able to recall numbers to 6, how to introduce themselves, say how they are, AND sing all the songs and rhymes we have been learning!  They really are little superstars and it just goes to show what even a little foreign language exposure a week at such a young age can do, their little brains just soak it all up - fantastic!

So, for this half-term we will of course continue to reinforce the work we did over the first few sessions but our new topics are going to be animals and colours and they are going to be mainly focused around Eric Carle's "Ours brun, dis-moi..."  this seemed an obvious choice of story for this topic.  If you are unfamiliar with it check out my blog post of a couple of week's ago about the story.

I read the story to the children in English and French and decided for the first session to focus on just 4 animal words in depth.  I chose l'ours (the bear), le mouton (the sheep), le chien (the dog) and le chat (the cat).  I chose these particular 4 for the following reasons - the bear because this is the title and starting point of the story; the sheep because this allowed me to introduce the song baa baa mouton noir and the colour noir (black); and le chien and le chat as I figured several of the children would have one of these as a pet and so would be interested to learn their names in French.

We practiced saying the names of these 4 animals and then we played 2 games with our puppet Jacques.  In the first game, Jacques tried to remember the names of the animals, if he got them right the children would put their thumbs up and say "oui", if he got it wrong they would put their thumbs down and tell him the correct name of the animal.  In the second game, I asked the children to "fermez les yeux" (close their eyes) and Jaques hid one of the animals - the children had to say in French which animal was missing when they opened their eyes.  The children all responded well to these games and they provided plenty of oral and listening practice of the new words.

We then sang baa baa black sheep in English before I introduced the French version.  For those who are unfamiliar with the lyrics, they are as follows:

Baa baa mouton noir
As-tu de la laine?
Oui, monsieur, oui, monsieur,
trois poches pleines.
Une pour mon maître,
Une pour Madame,
Et une pour les enfants
qui jouent au ra-ta-tam.

I then asked the children to choose another colour from the story, they chose rouge and so we sang "baa baa mouton rouge" instead!  This proved a popular addition and so I intend to add to this over the next few weeks by adding additional verses including a variety of colours.

I have decided that for this topic each of the children will make a mini book.  I have made them all a front cover entitled "Je vois..."  and this week gave each of them page one which has a picture of a sheep and the line "un mouton noir" ready for them to colour in black.  We will add a page or two each week and then once complete it can be stapled together as a little book to read together at home and reinforce the language.

As always, we rounded off our session by singing au revoir to each other.

Animal vocabulary can be reinforced at home if playing with toy animals, or looking at picture books with animals in.  Also a day trip to the zoo or just to the park to feed the ducks can provide opportunities.

Colours can be practiced even more easily - when putting bricks or mega blocks away, when getting dressed, when out and about, in the car - my children love to take a colour or two each and when they see a car in one of their colours they have to shout out it's colour name.

Hope you have a fun week of colours and animals! :o)

ours brun, dis-moi...

This week as a change from a new song, I decided that we would once again have a story with a related craft.  I have recently purchased Eric Carle's "Ours brun dis-moi" (Brown bear, Brown bear) and it has already become a firm favourite with Little Imp.  It is such a good story to read in a foreign language to your little one not only because it is a story that they are probably very familiar with in English, but because the French is fairly simple and very repetitive and as with all Eric Carle books the pictures are colourful and engaging. If you do not have a copy of the story lots of libraries have foreign language children's book now so that may be worth a look.  I bought my copy from little linguist but it is also available from amazon and waterstones - and I have often picked up good condition French books second hand on ebay for a fraction of the new price!  Alternatively, here is a link to a slideshare of the story online: http://www.slideshare.net/smt786/our-brun-dismoi?ref=http://pinterest.com/pin/527132331355014382/


To accompany the story I had lots of ideas for craft activities - in fact if you check out my "ours brun" pinterest board you will see just how many I have come across that I think are worth a try at some point!  In the end, however, I decided to exploit the obvious opportunities which the book offers to introduce colours and animals.

We haven't had the paints out in our craft time for a while and I have a whole load of animal sponges and stencils, so this too seemed like a good starting point.

Each of our toddlers chose to paint whichever animals they wanted from the selection available and using whichever colours they wanted from the available paints.  We then annotated these for them to describe what animals they could see in their picture, along the lines of the book.

So, for example, on the top of Little Imp's picture I wrote out:
"Little Imp, dis-moi ce que tu vois?" (Little Imp tell me what do you see?) followed by "Je vois..."  (I see...) and then I labelled each of her animal pictures accordingly e.g. un chat rouge (a red cat) etc.  Her painting is now proudly displayed on the playroom wall not only providing lovely decoration but also giving us the opportunity to practice some French when we are playing in there and look at it.  I tend to do this with all her artwork as it provides lots of different vocabulary opportunities during the week :o)

Of course, you do not necessarily need to use paints and stencils/sponges to create such a picture.  Your little one could draw their own animals or you could print out some animals to colour in and then stick them onto a backing sheet to label them.  You could also make a little mini book - in fact this is something that I think I will do with Little Imp when she is a little older.

Here are our fabulous paintings to give you some inspiration for your own brown bear style pictures:

Happy story telling and crafting! :o)