Ainsi font, font, font...

Ainsi font, font, font is a traditional French song that is sung to babies once they reach an age where they start to imitate adults.  The action for the song is to turn the wrist clockwise and anti-clockwise and the babies join in by imitating this action.

The words to the traditional song are as follows:

Ainsi font, font, font
Les petites marionnettes
Ainsi font font font
Trois petits tours
Et puis s'en vont
Elle reviendront
Les petites marionnettes
Elles reviendront
Quand les autres partiront.

There are various versions which you can download online, although they are all quite fast.  But once you have an idea of the tune you can go it alone! 

If you would like to sing the song in English with your little one too, this translation has been arranged to fit the tune:

They go this way, way
The little, little puppets,
They go this way, way,
Three little twirls.
Then they go away,
They will come back
The little, little puppets,
They will come back
When the others go away.

A lovely alternative version, which includes different actions for children to join in with like dancing and jumping and is at a more reasonable tempo for non-native speakers can be found on the lingotots album “lingotunes”.

Clearly a song about marionettes had to involve a puppet making craft and here is how we did it:

 

Perfect little puppets all ready to join in with the song!

Promenons nous dans les bois...

This morning, our toddlers went for a walk in the woods (well an imaginary walk in the woods) - but we had to keep an eye out for the big bad wolf!

Today's new song is called "Promenons nous dans les bois" (We are walking in the woods).  It is a very repetitive song - the refrain is the longest part and each verse consists of no more than a sentence in French.

First, I will set the scene - the refrain talks about how we are walking in the woods which is fine as the wolf is not there.  If he was he would eat us, but because he is not he won't!  The refrain finishes by asking the wolf 3 questions:

Loup y'est-tu?  Are you there wolf?

M'entends tu?  Can you hear me?

Que fais-tu?  What are you doing?

The verses are the wolf's response to the last question, e.g. Je mets ma chemise (I'm putting on my shirt).  Each verse follows the same pattern, just the item of clothing changes, until finally, in the last verse, he says "me voilà!"  Here I am!

Although a long song, there are 7 verses in total, it is fairly easy to pick up because of the repetition and has the added advantage of introducing items of clothing.  Of course, you could change the verses to include different items of clothing if you wanted too.

The song goes like this:

Promenons nous dans les bois,

pendant que le loup n’y est pas

si le loup y était, il nous mangerai

mais comme il n’y est pas

il nous mangera pas!

Loup y-es-tu?

M’entends tu?

Que fais tu?

1.           Je mets ma culotte!

2.           Je mets mon pantalon!

3.           Je mets ma chemise!

4.           Je mets mes chausettes!

5.           Je mets mes chaussures!

6.           Je mets mon manteau!

7.           Me voilà!

If you are unsure of the tune, then here is a link to a version that you can listen to online and also download for free!:

http://enfants.stephyprod.com/musique-gratuite-pour-enfants/musique-gratuite-pour-enfants-musique-mp3-gratuite-mp3-pour-enfants-promenons-nous-dans-bois.htm

For our craft activity today, we created a big picture to illustrate the song. 

We started with a big piece of paper on the wall, blank apart from a wolf:

We then all created our own trees to turn this big blank page into a forest/woods scene.  Here are some pictures of the fantastic trees our little ones created  and finally the end result of all their creatitivity and hard work:

Happy singing and crafting - and I hope the wolf stays away!! ;o)

New page for book reviews!

I have added a new page to my blog where I will post reviews of the French books Little Imp and I read.
The first review is of Rod Campbell's Dear Zoo/Cher Zoo.
Hope you enjoy it! :o)

Dans la ferme de MacDonald I-A-I-A-O

As the title suggests, our new song this Friday was a French version of an English favourite - Old MacDonald had a farm.  This song gives the opportunity to introduce some animal words in French and also the animal sounds, which are different to the sounds in English.  It also has the advantage of introducing French vowel sounds through the I-A-I-A-O phrase.

There are lots and lots of different versions of this song ranging form the more French sounding La ferme à Mathurin to the most English sounding "Dans la ferme de MacDonald".  It really is down to you which you prefer - a quick google search will bring up lots of possibilities for you to choose from.

For the version we sang on Friday, the first verse goes like this (the tune is, of course, the same as in English!):

Dans la ferme de MacDonald I-A-I-A-O

Dans la ferme il y a des vaches

I-A-I-A-O

Il y a un meuh par ici, un meuh par là,

Ici un meuh, là un meuh,

partout il y a des meuh-meuhs

Dans la ferme de Macdonald I-A-I-A-O

Of course, you can add as many verses as you wish and in any order you choose.  To get you started here are a few animal names with their sounds:

la vache = the cow      meuh

le mouton = the sheep       bêêê 

le cochon = the pig                  groën 

le carnard = the duck             coin 

le cheval = the horse             hiiiiiiii 

la poule = the hen                  cotcotcodet 

le chien = the dog                   ouah-ouah 

le chat = the cat                      miaou 

le coq = rooster                      cocorico

l'âne = the donkey            hihan

le chèvre = the goat          bêêê

Our craft today was a peekaboo barn.  I got the idea from the all kids network website and have included the link here because there are some templates which you can print off for the barn itself and also the animals:

http://www.allkidsnetwork.com/crafts/animals/farm/barn-animals.asp

The craft was easy enough to do, although our toddlers (and their older siblings) did find it a bit time consuming as there were so many different elements to make the picture.  By the time we had finished our sing-song we didn't have lots of time for creating.

The end results though were fantastic, I'm sure you'll agree!



Have fun singing and crafting!

Je fais le tour de ma maison

This week our toddler session was back and with it being the school holidays we were joined by the school age siblings of our littlies.  After a very energetic sing song and dance, we learnt a new action rhyme before heading over to the craft tables to create some paper plate funny faces!


The rhyme is called "Je fais le tour de ma maison" and there are several versions of it.  The one I chose to use goes like this:

Je fais le tour de ma maison   (circle face with a finger)
Je ferme mes fenêtres (close eyes with a finger)
Je ferme ma porte (close mouth with a finger)
Je tourne la clé (mime turning a key infront of mouth)
Ça y'est. Bonne nuit. (mime sleeping)

Trnaslated into English it goes like this:
I walk around my house
I close my windows
I close my door
I turn the key
That's it. Good night.

Little Imp loves doing the rhyme "round and round the garden" in both English and French, and I was looking for something similar when I came across this little rhyme.  The French is fairly simple and if you like you can do an English version with your little one as well, it works just as well as the original.

Here are some of the wonderful funny faces that our toddlers and the big girls and boys produced:



Allez en vacances 2 - Little Imp visits the zoo!

I must admit that the weather in France was so wonderful and after all the rain of recent weeks back home, it really was difficult to drag ourselves away from the beach at all.  We did, however, make a day trip to the Zoo de Champrepus during the week.  If any of you are venturing over to Normandy at some point, I would definitely recommend this zoo - there is a good variety of animals including a farm/petting zoo area where the children can interact with and feed the goats, rabbits, guinea pigs, etc.  The food in the restaurant was tasty and reasonably priced and there were play areas and bouncy castles near the picnic areas. 

The trip to the zoo itself obviously provided a great opportunity to introduce Little Imp to the animal names in French.  Of course, a lot of them were new to her in English as well and so I made sure to talk about them and name them in both languages.  We took plenty of photographs of the animals and now back home we can reinforce the French names by naming the animals in French when we look at the pictures together.  Here is a small selection of the animals we saw:

le zèbre

le guépard

le flamant

la girafe

la chèvre

 le lémurien

 le lion

le suricate









le tigre

As well as naming the animals from the photographs, Little Imp has again been practising her colours in French by describing the animals to me, and we have been reinforcing body parts and numbers by counting legs and eyes, etc.

Little Imp was already a big fan of the book "Dear Zoo" by Rod Campbell and I have recently purchased the French/English bilingual version.  She is really enjoying listening to an already familiar story but in French and is already naming the animals in French when we read in French ( but still in English if we read that version).  I ordered my copy from Little Linguist but I'm sure that it is available in most large bookshops and online book retailers.

I really am amazed how quickly Little Imp is soaking up this new language and we really are having lots of fun together with our French.  I think animals will continue to be a topic we bring into our play over the next few weeks and I will let you know what games and activities we come up with to keep reinforcing them.