Au clair de la lune...

This week I opted for a very traditional French children's song "Au clair de la lune" for our new song.  I decided to use just the first verse as although the tune is not too fast the vocabulary is quite tricky for tiny tots and it is very important that the children are going to be able to join in with the singing as well as the mummies!

 

The first verse lyrics are as follows:

 

Au clair de la lune

Mon ami Pierrot

Prête-moi ta plume

pour écrire un mot

Ma chandelle est morte

Je n'ai plus de feu

Ouvre-moi la porte

Pour l'amour de Dieu

There is a translation of the lyrics into English on Mama Lisa's wonderful website here for those that would like one:
http://www.mamalisa.org/?lang=French&t=es&p=161

A song about the light of the moon, obviously needed a moon based craft activity and whilst trying to think of something I remembered a craft that I had done years ago when my eldest children were toddlers - puffy paint!  This would create the perfect texture for a picture of the moon.

To make your own puffy paint you will need 3 parts pva glue to 1 part shaving foam.  This must be the original foam and not the gel kind.  Just mix the two together and you have a wonderfully gooey (if rather manly smelling!) mixture with which to get creative.  When it dries it stays puffed up on the paper so ideal for our moon, but also great for a snow picture, etc.  If you want to make different colours of puffy paint just add a little food colouring to your mixture.

To create their moon pictures, out toddlers used brushes - or their hands - to spread puffy paint in a moon shape on their craft paper.  They then added some stars using a variety of materials from the craft box - felt, shiny paper, tissue paper, card, etc.  And a bit of sparkle with some gold glitter glue.

 

Here are their wonderful moon pictures:

 

Happy singing and crafting! :o)