On l'appelait Nez Rouge...

For our last pre-Christmas toddler session today, we enjoyed singing all our Christmas songs from the last few weeks and attempted a new addition - "On l'appelait Nez Rouge" or "Rudolf the red-nosed Reindeer".

I have to admit that it was not the easiest song for toddlers (or Mummys!) to sing - but we had fun trying.  We just sang the first couple of verses, if you want to have a go yourself the tune is the same as in English and the lyrics are as follows:

On l’appelait Nez Rouge,

Ah! Comme il était mignon!

Le petit renne au nez rouge

Rouge comme un lumignon!

Son petit nez faisait rire

Chacun s’en moquait beaucoup

On allait jusqu’à dire

Qu’il aimait prendre un petit coup!

Une fée qui l’éntendait

pleurer dans le noir
Pour le consoler lui dit
“Viens au paradis ce soir!
Comme un ange Nez Rouge
Tu conduiras dans le ciel
Avec ton petit nez rouge
Le chariot du Père Noël!”

Of course, a song about Rudolf required a craft about Rudolf, and today we made Christmas cards with a hand and footprint Rudolf on the front.  To make your own you will need a piece of A4 coloured card folded in half, brown construction paper (or similar), construction paper in a colour of your choice for the antlers, a red pom pom or felt, foam etc for the nose, googly eyes, and of course - glitter!!

First of all, draw around your toddler's foot - this will make Rudolf's face.  Then draw around each of their hands - these will become the antlers.

Cut these shapes out and glue to the folded card - antlers first with the face just covering the bottom of them.

Add the nose and eyes and draw on a smile and then decorate with glitter and any other embellishments you wish!

Finally, finish your card by writing "Joyeux Noël" on the inside.

Here are our fantastic Rudolf cards - what a great keepsake of tiny hands and feet!!

 

 

Little Imp and I wish you all a "Joyeux Noël et une bonne année" and we'll be back with more French songs and craft ideas in January! :o)

Nous chantons joyeux Noël...

Tonsillitis gone, voice back and so it was back to toddlers as usual this morning  :0)

Having missed last week's session I wanted to try and cover the songs I had planned for both weeks and so there are 3 new songs this week.  All of course with a Christmas theme, and a lovely Christmas tree craft to accompany them.


The first song up is my reinvention of the Christmas classic "We wish you a merry Christmas", " Nous chantons joyeux Noël".  Sung to the same tune but a bit more toddler friendly and action focused, the lyrics are as follows:

1. Nous chantons joyeux Noël,

Nous chantons joyeux Noël,

Nous chantons joyeux Noël,

Et une bonne année!

2. Nous frappons joyeux Noël,

Nous frappons joyeux Noël,

Nous frappons joyeux Noël,

Et une bonne année!

3. Nous sautons joyeux Noël,

Nous sautons joyeux Noël,

Nous sautons joyeux Noël,

Et une bonne année!

 

This got us all warmed up on this cold, wintery morning and was popular with all our toddlers.

 

Song number 2 is sung to the tune of "Frosty the snowman" and I'm afraid I can't take the credit for this one.  It is one that I stumbled across a long time ago and have used with children in school each Christmas since.  I'm afraid I have no idea where it came from and so can't credit the author.  It is a super little song though and I'm sure you will enjoy it as much as we did this morning.  The lyrics are as follows:

 

Je m’appelle Frosty.

Je suis un bonhomme de neige.

J’ai deux yeux noirs et une bouche

et un nez de carotte.

Je m’appelle Frosty.

Je suis un bonhomme de neige.

Je porte un écharpe verte, un chapeau noir

et je suis très content!

Finally, song number 3 is again one of my own.  I took Little Imp to a local Toddler group the week before last and we sang this lovely little song to the tune "I'm a little teapot":

I'm a little snowman

short and fat

Here's my scarf and here's my hat.

When the weather's snowing,

come and play.

Build a snowman everyday!

 

I thought it was a lovely idea and decided to try to come up with a French version for our group.  I'm sure it could be improved upon but here it is:

 

Je suis un bonhomme de neige

petit et gros,

Je porte une écharpe et je porte un chapeau.
Tous les jours quand il neige,
allons-vite,
Faisons un bonhomme de neige
tout de suite!

After our singing and dancing, we made some lovely Christmas trees to take home.  We had the templates of a tree and some decorations on card and after we decorated them and cut them out we could assemble them to make a 3d tree.  Here are the results of our efforts:

 

More Christmas songs and craft ideas next week and in the meantime we hope you have fun singing some not very authentic but catchy and simple French songs! :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!

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)

Il pleut, il mouille...

Il pleut, il mouille...  it really seems like that is all the weather is doing this week!  So following the recent autumn wet weather theme, this song was the perfect addition for our toddler group this week.

The actual song has several verses and is a little bit too complicated for out toddlers to sing.  I came across a lovely shortened version on the ELC "Fun with French" CD though which seemed perfect.

The lyrics are as follows:

Il pleut, il mouille,
C'est la fête à la grenouille,
Quand il ne pleuvra plus,
C'est la fête à la tortue!

Clearly a song about a frog needed a craft about a frog and I remembered seeing a pebble frog craft somewhere on the net.  A bit of googling and I found it again here: http://www.brimfulcuriosities.com/2010/07/city-dog-country-frog-by-mo-willems.html

To reproduce this craft at home you will need:

a pebble - a farily smooth frog body shaped one if you can find one!
some green craft foam
green paint
googly or sticker eyes
strong pva glue or (even better) glue dots

I found a great template for making the frogs legs here:
http://www.ziggityzoom.com/activity/frog-prince-rock-buddy 

And there is even a template for a crown here so if you have some yellow foam or card as well you can make your frog pebble into a frog prince!

The method is very simple - but pretty messy! - just cover your pebble in green paint and leave to dry.  Whilst it is drying cut your legs out of foam and then stick on your eyes and legs using the glue or glue dots.

In all the painty, messy fun this morning I forgot to take any pictures of the children's wonderful creations :o(  So all I have is one of Little Imp's Frog.  Anyone who was at toddlers this morning and wants to email me a picture of theirs I will add them.

So here is our creation:

 

Happy singing, pebble hunting and painting! 

 

 Emma and Little Imp :o)

Les feuilles sont tombées...

Sticking with the autumnal feel, this week's new song was all about the beautiful colours of autumn leaves and of course, we had an autumn leaf craft to accompany it. 

 

The song I chose is called "Comptine des couleurs d'automne" and it is sung to the tune of "See the little bunnies".  It is a lovely little song about the colours of autumn leaves and provides a great introduction to some less common colours like "rouge-bordeaux" and "dorées".  Little Imp and I had a lovely time collecting the leaves for our craft yesterday and describing their colours in French as we picked them up.  It was a brilliant activity in itself, lots of fun kicking the leaves and jumping in them with the added bonus of speaking someFrench as we described the leaves and exclaimed about the fun we were having!

 

 The lyrics to the song are as follows:

Je connais un arbre

Qui est dénudé

Car pendant l'automne

Les feuilles sont tombées.

Elles devenaient jaunes

Brunes et orangées

 
Vertes, rouge-bordeaux 

 
Et même dorées.

 

 

 

A rough translation would be:

 

 

I know a tree which is bare,

 

because in autumn the leaves have fallen.

 

 

They turned yellow, brown and orange,

 

green, burgundy and even golden.

 

 

Our craft activity this week was all my own idea - no really, it was!!  Well, I might have taken a little bit of inspiration from the brilliant Julia Donaldson and her "Stick man" story - but only a little bit!!  This week, we used the big bag of leaves and the other usual crafty bits - googly eyes, felt, cupcake cases, pipe cleaners, glitter glue, etc. to creat our very own leaf people.  A really simple but effective craft as you can see from our great autumn leaf people pictures below:

 

 

Little Imp and I hope that you have a fun week kicking up leaves and creating some leaf people of your own! :o)