La chenille qui fait des trous

Our second story book based session was focused around the story of "la chenille qui fait des trous" (the caterpillar that made holes or as we know it "the very hungry caterpillar" by Eric Carle.

We had fun listening to the story and counting the different fruits and the holes.

We also had a go at the action rhyme la petite chenille:

La petite chenille se promène dans le jardin (hold your left arm horizontal and with your right index finger make a caterpillar crawling along your arm)

Et rencontre une arbre (put your arm vertical and spread your palm out to make a tree)

Elle monte l'arbre (make your little caterpillar climb the tree)

Et dans ses branches elle fabrique un cocon (make a fist with you right hand on your spread palm)

Un jour passe, et puis une nuit (keep your tree arm and with your other arm wave infront of the tree one way for day and back again for night) 

Un jour passe et puis une nuit (as above)

Un jour passe et puis une nuit (as above)

Et la petite chenille se transforme en papillon (make a cocoon with your fist again and then make both your hands into a butterfly by spreading your palms and crossing your thumbs.  Make your papillon fly off).

For our craft we painted our very own chenille using paints, balloons, fingers and brushes and stuck on some eye stickers to complete the look:

Some of the children also had a go at making a papillon (butterfly) by painting on one half of their paper and folding the other side over to print a symmetrical pattern for their butterflies:

Lots of messy fun was had and I'm sure you will agree the final paintings are fabulous!! 

Happy singing and crafting! :0)

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)

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)

Le petit train fait...

Our theme this week was transport and try as I might I could not find a song that covered several forms of transport.  We have previously sung "les roues du bus" and I began to wonder if it was possible to alter the words to fit other modes of transport...  It was and the song "Le petit train fait" was born!

So, the tune is the wheels on the bus and the first verse goes like this:

Le petit tran fait chou chou chou
chou chou chou
chou chou chou
Le petit train fait chou chou chou
pour aller à Bottesford.

Obviously I chose Bottesford as that is where our Toddler group takes place but you can replace it with the town you live in or "la maison" or "la plage", etc. as you wish.

I wanted the song to include a variety of modes of transport but didn't want it so long that the toddlers became bored of it so i decided just to add 3 more verses.  I added "la petite voiture fait vroom, vroom, vroom" (car), "le petit avion fait neeyaam"(aeroplane) and "la petite fusée fait woooosh" (rocket).  I also tried this with my primary school groups and they then added more verses themselves making up sounds for ambulances, lorries, motorbikes, tractors etc.  Lots of fun!!

Our craft then needed to include a variety of transport in order to cover the vocabulary in the song and also the possibility of introducing some more at home during the week.  I decided on a town scene with movable transport to make the craft more fun and interactive. 

To make your own transport town scene, you will need:
a3 sheet of craft paper or thin card
black paper/foam/felt for the road
blue paper/foam/felt for the sea/lake/pond
green paper/foam/felt for grass/fields/bushes
paper to make the buildings
transport foam stickers - I got mine from yellow moon, they have updated them now though and they are even more colourful and bright and not expensive for the amount you get in the bag.  Here is a link if you want it: http://www.yellowmoon.org.uk/product-Transport-Foam-Stickers-A067.htm
Alternatively, you could make your own transport using the paper, card, foam etc in your craft box.
craft lollipop sticks
felt pens, crayons, glitter glues, etc

First design your background scene.  Then cut slits in the roads etc where your transport will go, allow them some room to move along the road/track but don't cut to near to the edges of the paper as this makes your picture very unstable and difficult to play with. 

Stick your transport onto your lollipop sticks and pop them through the appropriate slits in the picture.

Voilà!  A perfect interactive transport picture! :o)

Here are our wonderful creations to give you some inspiration for your own project:

 

 

Don't forget to check out the book review page for my transport themed recommendations!

 

Happy singing and crafting! :o)

 

 

Où est mon renne?

This week there has unfortunately been no toddler session as I am suffering with tonsillitis and have lost my voice :o( 

The week has mostly been spent snuggled up on the sofa with Little Imp looking at books and so I thought I would add another review to the book review page, which has been rather neglected since I pinched the idea from the lovely Tallulah all those months ago!

One of Little Imp's favourites this week has been the Usborne book Où est mon renne? (That's not my reindeer).  So if you hop over to the book review page you can read all about it!


Fingers crossed the voice will return and we will be back to singing and crafting again next Friday!

Cher Zoo...

This week, as a change from all songs, I decided to add a story at the end of our sing-song and relate our craft activity to this.  As you will know if you have read my first book review - I will get round to doing another one soon I promise! - Rod Campbell's Dear Zoo/Cher Zoo bilingual text is a real favourite with Little Imp at the moment.  We have been reading it at least once a day since our visit to the zoo on holiday and she is getting really good at naming the toy animals in French as well as English when we play with those.  It seemed, therefore, an obvious choice for a story - plus I had come across this lovely craft idea when googling last week and I thought the children would have fun making it so, decision made!

Now, in all honesty, there is a big difference between reading a story to one Little Imp on your knee and trying to show the pictures to a wriggly bunch of toddlers (and they were quite wriggly having danced around pretty energetically to the Hokey Cokey in French as well as ainsi font and meunier tu dors amongst others!), whilst simultaneously remembering the French text - but I think they all enjoyed it!!  They all stayed sitting and looking at the book so that must be a good sign! I guess we'll know for sure next week if they want to hear the story again!!  Anyway, even if the book wasn't as successful as the songs and rhymes are, I think it is valuable to include one every so often as it widens the language introduced quite significantly and also introduces French in another format.

If you don't have a copy of the book in French, it is possible to make your own simple French translation with a few phrases and the animal names and descriptions.  If you don't feel confident enough to ad lib the French, you could write out the phrases first and blu tac them into the English version to give you a prompt as you read it, I'm sure your little one wouldn't mind! :o)

The craft idea, is very simple to make but also very effective.  The original version I found on the web calls for animal crackers - now I had planned to substitute these for the chocolate animal biscuits that you get here in the UK, but decided that the Zoo would be a bit redundant once the biscuits had been eaten, and so I decided on Foam animal stickers as well.  The local Co-op and Spar both let me down unfortunately though - not a chocolate animal biscuit to be found :o( - so it was a good job we had the foam animals!
The original craft idea complete with edible animals can be found here:
http://www.allmylittlegems.com/2012/03/zoo-craft-for-kids-preschool-fun.html

Anyway, to make your our version of the Zoo you will need:
1 piece of A4 card,
4 or 5 pipecleaners
a hole punch
foam animal stickers or equivalent,
felt pens/crayons/glitter glue - to decorate your Zoo as you wish

1. Fold the card in half
2. Unfold and on the inside draw a rectangle on one half - leave enough of a border around the edge to allow for the holes to be punched
3. Cut out the rectangle and re-fold the card
4. Punch 4 or 5 pairs of holes along the top and bottom edge of the rectangle - try to line them up if you can
5. Stick your animals on to the card so that they can be seen through the cut out rectangle and decorate the zoo as you wish
6. Thread your pipe cleaners through the holes to make the bars, just twist the ends around to secure them

Here is how we all got on:

 

 

 

 

 

Hope you have lots of fun reading the story yourselves and creating your very own zoo! :o)

It's easier than you think to teach your little one French!

Have you considered teaching your little one another language but dismissed it as being too difficult and too expensive?  It is actually easier than you think - and you don't need to be fluent in a language yourself to start!
I'm sure you have plenty of toys and everyday activities that lend themselves to introducing a language.  Just by spending 5 or 10 minutes a day you would be amazed at how much a toddler can pick up.
Little Imp was 15 months old when I started running my toddler classes and prior to that I had not spoken any French to her at all.  Now only 4 months on she can say "Bonjour" and "Au revoir", asks for French versions of nursery rhymes as well as English ones "Baa Baa mou noir mama" (Baa Baa mouton noir mama) or "Baa Baa sheep mama" (Baa Baa black sheep mama) depending which one she wants to sing and can name several colours and fruits in both English and French.
My aim with this blog is to document the activities we do at our toddler group - songs and crafts that you can  do with your own little one at home - and also ideas for introducing a little taste of French into everyday life.
Thanks for reading and I hope that you enjoy learning some French along with us!
Emma and Little Imp :o)