Last week, Little Imp and I, along with the rest of the family, spent a fabulous time enjoying the sunshine in France. Trips to the beach and zoo and meals out in the local restaurants all provided plenty of opportunities to speak French and to learn some new vocabulary. Of course, bonjour, merci and au revoir featured heavily - much to the delight of all the French people we met - and as Little Imp became more and more confident greeting and thanking people as we were out and about the responses of "du mignon!" were abundant! And really it was very cute to see and hear our little toddler chirruping away in French so happily! :o)
Here are a few ideas for introducing some holiday French - you don't even have to be in France! This first post will focus on the beach with posts on the zoo and eating out to follow :o)
The beach provided a great source for new vocabulary and given the glorious weather, we spent plenty of time there giving lots opportunity to reinforce the new words throughout the week. I introduced Little Imp to the following words and used the opportunity to reinforce the colours that she is already pretty confident with now:
la plage - the beach
la mer - the sea
le sable - the sand
le seau - the bucket
la pelle - the spade
le château de sable - the sand castle
les douves de château - the castle moat
les coquiallges - the shells
le maillot de bain - swimming costume
le chapeau - hat
I named the items in English and in French before moving on to requests in French e.g. passe-moi le seau. I used the verb passer since it is a cognate (so close to the English word pass) and therefore makes comprehension that much easier.
We talked about the colours of things - La mer est de quelle couleur? etc and moved on to requests involving more complicated vocabulary - Passe-moi la pelle rouge, etc.
Collecting shells, building sandcastles and jumping waves all provided the opportunity to practice counting in French.
