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)
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)
