L'automne week 1 - umbrella pictures

After 2 weeks off and a week of lovely warm weather and sunshine on our half-term holiday, the cold, wet English weather we returned to seemed a good fit for our new topic of l'automne (autumn).

The songs which we will be singing over the next few weeks, before we get into the Christmas season!, include the following:

L'automne est un chanson de pluie,

Goutte, gouttelettes de pluie,

Il pleut, il mouille,

Meunier tu dors

Comptine des couleurs d'automne

And

Les feux d'artifices ( of course there had to be some reference to bonfire night!)

These are all songs which have featured previously in the blog with accompanying crafts so please have a browse for the lyrics and some more craft ideas :0)

This week we made umbrella pictures.  We used cupcake cases folded in half to make the umbrellas and pipe cleaners for the handles. We used felt, foam and cotton wool to make our rain clouds and glitter glue in silver, blue and white for the raindrops.  We then added some people or creatures under our umbrellas and added any other decorations we wanted.

Here are our finished pictures:

Happy crafting and singing! :0)

Il pleut, il mouille...

Il pleut, il mouille...  it really seems like that is all the weather is doing this week!  So following the recent autumn wet weather theme, this song was the perfect addition for our toddler group this week.

The actual song has several verses and is a little bit too complicated for out toddlers to sing.  I came across a lovely shortened version on the ELC "Fun with French" CD though which seemed perfect.

The lyrics are as follows:

Il pleut, il mouille,
C'est la fête à la grenouille,
Quand il ne pleuvra plus,
C'est la fête à la tortue!

Clearly a song about a frog needed a craft about a frog and I remembered seeing a pebble frog craft somewhere on the net.  A bit of googling and I found it again here: http://www.brimfulcuriosities.com/2010/07/city-dog-country-frog-by-mo-willems.html

To reproduce this craft at home you will need:

a pebble - a farily smooth frog body shaped one if you can find one!
some green craft foam
green paint
googly or sticker eyes
strong pva glue or (even better) glue dots

I found a great template for making the frogs legs here:
http://www.ziggityzoom.com/activity/frog-prince-rock-buddy 

And there is even a template for a crown here so if you have some yellow foam or card as well you can make your frog pebble into a frog prince!

The method is very simple - but pretty messy! - just cover your pebble in green paint and leave to dry.  Whilst it is drying cut your legs out of foam and then stick on your eyes and legs using the glue or glue dots.

In all the painty, messy fun this morning I forgot to take any pictures of the children's wonderful creations :o(  So all I have is one of Little Imp's Frog.  Anyone who was at toddlers this morning and wants to email me a picture of theirs I will add them.

So here is our creation:

 

Happy singing, pebble hunting and painting! 

 

 Emma and Little Imp :o)

goutte gouttelettes de pluie...

 

This week's toddler session saw the introduction of 2 new songs.  Both on the theme of rain and both very short, hence including them both today. 

The first of these songs is called "goutte gouttelettes de pluie" and is actually quite a long song.  I came across a version though which was just the chorus of the song and decided that this was perfect for our toddlers.  The chorus that we sang goes like this:

 

Goutte gouttelettes de pluie,

Mon chapeau se mouille.

Goutte goutelettes de pluie,

Mes souliers aussi.

 

 

The full version, lyrics and an mp3 version to listen to, can be found here for those of you that would like it: http://www.momes.net/comptines/eau/gouttesgouttelettes.html

 

The second song is called "L'automne est une chanson de pluie" and is actually supposed to be sung as a round.  Our toddlers are a bit too young to grasp the concept of singing in a round though and so we just sang it as it is.  The words are as follows:

 

L'automne est une chanson de pluie,

ouvre donc,

ouvre donc,

ton parapluie,

ton parapluie.

 

An mp3 version to listen to for the tune can be found here:

http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=3042&c=22

 

Clearly, songs about rain needed rainy crafts and I came across two lovely crafts which I decided to combine for our activity this week.  The ideas came from here: http://kiboomukidscrafts.com/alphabet-letters-letter-u/ and here: http://www.mamajennblogs.com/search/label/Letter%20%22U%22%20Activities

 

Basically, the idea is to make a rainy picture with umbrellas, clouds, etc and then raindrops which look real. And this is how we did it.

 

You will need:

craft paper

cupckae cases/doilies/ similar

pipe cleaners

cotton wool

pva glue

glitter glue

any other items you would like for decoration - we had stickers, felt shapes, ribbon, foam shapes, foam animals for example.

 

To make the umbrellas, you need to cut a pipe cleaner in half and bend into a j shape for the handle. 

 

Then cut a cupcake case in half, or cut a semi-circle shape out of a doily/foam/felt, etc. 

 

Glue your umbrellas to your craft paper.

 

Glue on some cotton wool clouds and add any extras you wish.  If you look at our pictures you will see animals under the umbrellas, a puddle, stickers to decorate the umbrellas, etc.

 

Now, to make the rain!

 

Blob pva glue and glitter glue randomly onto the picture.

Hang the picture upright to dry - you could peg it onto the washing line for example, or like we did sellotape to the window. You will see that the glue rain starts to drip down the paper just like raindrops.

 

 

 

Once the glue is dry it goes clear and really does look like you paper is rain splattered.  The picture unfortunately doesn't look as good as it does in real life.

 

 

Here are our finished pictures:

 

 

I hope that you enjoy trying out our rainy songs and crafts!