Preschool session 2 - greetings and counting to 6

As promised, here is a quick run through of our preschool session activities for today.

We started with our "Bonjour" song and I was happily surprised that all of the children had remembered the song and sang along with enthusiasm and volume! :o)  a great start to only our second session!

Last week I had introduced the question "Comment t'appelles tu?" and was delighted that the children had again retained an understanding of the question and also could all form a response using "Je m'appelle".

The positives kept right on flowing as they all enthusiastically counted from un to six :o)  In fact, as they had all retained so much information from our first session I deviated from my lesson plan a bit here and decided to introduce ages, with the children all being preschool age we had covered the required numbers and although initially they were counting up "J'ai un, deux, trois ans" for example,  when I revisited the question towards the end of the session some were able to respond with a perfectly formed sentence. :o)

Last week I had introduced the song "5 brioches aux raisins" my version of 5 currant buns, and we sang this song again today the children taking it in turns to bring up a cent in exchange for their brioche.  Initially, although they remembered the format of the song and the activity, mine was  the only voice singing the verse. All the children joined in with the counting of the brioches at the start of each verse though and by two or three verses in I could hear little voices joining in with some of the verses too. 

To further reinforce the numbers, we played another game very similar to last weeks.  This time instead of a gingerbread man, we had an alien and he was surrounded by the numbers 1-6.  Each child took a turn at rolling the die and we all counted the dots together and then identified and crossed out or coloured over the correct number on the sheet.  The children enjoyed both the die rolling, number colouring elements and the chanting of numbers in French as we counted the dots.  We also counted objects in the room (up to a maximum of 6) which slowly introduces other child relevant vocabulary, namely toys, in French.

Another song about numbers "Voici mes doigts" was very briefly introduced this week and we will spend more time on that next week.  Tomorrow's toddler group will be focused on this song as well and will of course link a craft activity.

A few further ideas to reinforce numbers at home that you may want to try include counting toys into and out of the toy box; counting the ducks when feeding them; counting the number of red/blue/etc. cars passed on the way to school/the supermarket/etc; building towers of a certain number of bricks; nature scavenger hunts - find 1 twig, 2 leaves, 3 petals, etc. (also good for increasing vocabulary).

I hope you and your little ones have fun counting in French over the coming week! :o)