Le Printemps - week 2 - la fête des mamans

The second Friday of our Springtime theme was 2 days before Mothers' Day here in the UK and so it seemed appropriate to include a Mothers' Day song and craft. Both are ones we have done previously, but both so lovely they deserved to be done again!

The song is called "Comptine des bisous pour Maman" (rhyme of kisses for mummy) and the lyrics are as follows:

Sur un tissu très très doux,

Je dessine, je dessine,

Sur un tissu très très doux

Je dessine des bisous.

Pour la fête de Maman,

Je dessine, je dessine,

Pour la fête des Mamans,

Je dessine en m'appliquant.

Our craft was a mothers' day card with a hand holding a bunch of flowers.  To do this we drew around our toddlers' hands and cut them out.  We then glued the hand - but NOT the fingers to our folded piece of card.

The make flowers using tissue paper and pipe cleaners.

Stick the flowers onto the hand and the fold the fingers over and glue down so that it looks as if the hand is holding the flowers.

A very simple but very effective idea :0)

Happy singing and crafting! :0)

Le printemps - week 1 - springtime collage

For the first week of our springtime theme, we enjoyed singing a mixture of springtime and Easter themed songs and rhymes including: le printemps est arrivé, Lapin Pistache, poussin poussinet, deux petits lapins ( a variation on 2 little dickie birds) regarde les petits lapins (a French version of sleepy bunnies) and Lapin de Pâques (think teddy bear teddy bear turn around but with Easter bunnies!!)

We had lots of fun joining in with the words and actions and it was lovely to see how many of the words our older little ones could remember from last year :0)

Our first springtime craft was a collage picture.  The children had free choice from the craft boxes and there was a selection of foam animals (lapins, agneaux, chevaux and canards) to choose from to add to the pictures too.

And here they are, looking pretty spectacular and making Springtime and sunshine seem ever closer :0)

Happy singing and crafting! :0)

St Valentin

This year our toddler French session fell the day before Valentine's Day and so I decided on a Valentine's craft.

We drew around our toddlers' hands, cut them out and glued onto either end of a long strip of card.  We then cut out a large heart shape and this was decorated with a selection of collage materials and then glued to the centre of the strip - making wrap around arms ready to give a hug to somebody.

We added the phrase "un câlin pour toi" (a cuddle for you) and our valentine hugs were complete :0)

Happy singing and crafting! :0)

Le corps - week 4 - c'est moi!

So my New Year's resolution of updating my blog weekly kind of fizzled out after the end of January, I'm blaming poorly children but it could just be because I am hopeless!!  Ah well, better late than never I guess, so here is the first of a few quick catch up posts.

For the fourth week of our theme "le corps", our craft was to make a life size picture of ourselves.

I bought some rolls of wallpaper lining paper from a local diy store and cut off lengths of just over a metre - you just need to make sure you go a bit longer than your toddler's height.

First lay the lining paper on the floor and get your toddler to lie on top of the paper. With a pencil, draw around your toddler so that you have a life size outline.

With the outline complete, let your toddler choose from the craft materials you have available to create their hair, facial features, clothes, etc.

We then labelled our pictures in French with the body part vocabulary that we have been learning.

Here are our completed creations:

Happy singing and crafting! :0)