Petit Papa Noël ...

With this Friday's toddler session falling on the last day of November, I decided that I would start off our run of Christmas songs and activities with an advent calendar craft.  I came across a great Father Christmas one, I will give more details in a minute, and this then meant we needed a song about  Père Noël himself.

The trouble then came with which song to choose.  Did I go for a traditional French Christmas song - which would be a little tricky for our toddlers to join in with but would be authentic.  Or did I go for a simplified song about the man himself fitted to a well known tune that everyone would have a chance of joining in with over the next few weeks?

It was a really difficult one.  I wanted to stay true to France by choosing a proper Christmas song, but equally I wanted Little Imp and her friends to be able to join in themselves with the singing.  I would love her to be singing Christmas in both English and French this year!

After much deliberation and listening to plenty of songs I decided that we would have 2 new songs this week.  For our traditionally French tune, I chose the children's favourite of "Petit Papa Noël".  I love this song, the lyrics are so sweet and it is such a gentle song - I can see it becoming a bedtime song for the next few weeks for Little Imp.  As it is rather long though and the vocabulary quite complicated for our little learners, I cut it down to the first verse and the chorus, which are as follows:

C’est la belle nuit de Noël

La neige étend son manteau blanc

Et les yeux levés vers le ciel

À genoux, les petits enfants

Avant de fermer les paupières

Font une dernière prière.

Refrain:

Petit Papa Noël

Quand tu descendras du ciel

Avec des jouets par milliers

N’oublie pas mon petit soulier

Mais avant de partir

Il faudra bien te couvrir

Dehors tu vas avoir si froid

C’est un peu à cause de moi

 
Then for our break from tradition and our "sing-a long" song, with some simple Christmas vocabulary, we sang to the tune of  Frère Jacques:

Papa Noël, Papa Noël,
où est tu?, où est tu?

Je suis dans le traîneau, je suis dans le traîneau,

Ding, dang, dong, ding, dang, dong!

Petit cadeau, petit cadeau,

où est tu?, où est tu?
Je suis dans la chausette, Je suis dans la chausette,
Ding, dang, dong, ding, dang dong!

As i said, our craft this week was a Father Christmas advent calendar.  I found the idea and the template on the kaboose website here: http://crafts.kaboose.com/santas-beard-advent-calendar.html

I printed the templates out onto card and then found all the red materials that we had in the craft box - tissue paper, felt, net, crepe paper, card, pipe cleaners, foam, pom poms, etc. which the children could use for the red part of Santa's hat.  I also put out green materials for the holly leaves and cotton wool for the white trim on the hat.  There were the usual colouring pens and glitter glues for extra decoration.

The idea is to decorate Santa's hat and face but leave the beard with the numbered circles blank.  During Advent, you then glue one cotton wool ball onto the beard each day and by Christmas Eve you have a completed picture.

Here is how we got on:

 

Happy singing and crafting! :o)

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)

Les feuilles sont tombées...

Sticking with the autumnal feel, this week's new song was all about the beautiful colours of autumn leaves and of course, we had an autumn leaf craft to accompany it. 

 

The song I chose is called "Comptine des couleurs d'automne" and it is sung to the tune of "See the little bunnies".  It is a lovely little song about the colours of autumn leaves and provides a great introduction to some less common colours like "rouge-bordeaux" and "dorées".  Little Imp and I had a lovely time collecting the leaves for our craft yesterday and describing their colours in French as we picked them up.  It was a brilliant activity in itself, lots of fun kicking the leaves and jumping in them with the added bonus of speaking someFrench as we described the leaves and exclaimed about the fun we were having!

 

 The lyrics to the song are as follows:

Je connais un arbre

Qui est dénudé

Car pendant l'automne

Les feuilles sont tombées.

Elles devenaient jaunes

Brunes et orangées

 
Vertes, rouge-bordeaux 

 
Et même dorées.

 

 

 

A rough translation would be:

 

 

I know a tree which is bare,

 

because in autumn the leaves have fallen.

 

 

They turned yellow, brown and orange,

 

green, burgundy and even golden.

 

 

Our craft activity this week was all my own idea - no really, it was!!  Well, I might have taken a little bit of inspiration from the brilliant Julia Donaldson and her "Stick man" story - but only a little bit!!  This week, we used the big bag of leaves and the other usual crafty bits - googly eyes, felt, cupcake cases, pipe cleaners, glitter glue, etc. to creat our very own leaf people.  A really simple but effective craft as you can see from our great autumn leaf people pictures below:

 

 

Little Imp and I hope that you have a fun week kicking up leaves and creating some leaf people of your own! :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!

 

 

Boum, Boum, Boum!

After 2 weeks of no toddler group, Little Imp has been impatiently waiting for Friday to come around ever since we returned from holiday.  And it was great this morning to see so many happy, smiling faces who obviously all felt the same way!

Now, I know that Bonfire night is an English tradition and definitely not a French one, but I was sure that I would be able to find a song about fireworks in French.  And after a bit of googling I came across an excellent song on you tube written and performed by Catherine Puyravaud.  Here is a link to the you tube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnzC7V_DYlY

The lyrics go like this:

Boum, boum, boum les feux d’artifice

Ecoutez, comme ils font du bruit!

Boum, boum, boum les feux d’artifice

Regardez comme ils sont jolis!

Y’en a des rouges

Et y’en a des jaunes!

Y’en a des verts

Et y’en a des bleus!

Boum, boum, boum les feux d’artifice

Ecoutez, comme ils font du bruit!

Boum, boum, boum les feux d’artifice

Regardez comme ils sont jolis!

Obviously a fireworks song needs a fireworks craft.  This week we made fireworks paintings.  To create your own, you will need: black paper, a variety of bright coloured paints and a straw.  The idea is simple, you need to water down the paint a little so that it will move easily across the paper.  Then you drop paint onto the paper randomly and blow through the straw to make the paint spread out and create fireworks patterns.

Here are how ours turned out:

Little Imp and I hope you all have a fantastic Bonfire night on Monday and enjoy any fireworks displays you go to - we also hope you enjoy singing and painting about them too! :o)

Sur le pont d'Avignon...

This week's new song was the French classic "Sur le pont d'Avignon".  After our usual sing song we worked out some actions for the song - deciding what our handsome men and beautiful ladies would do - and then had a go at the song.  We danced around in a circle as is traditional for this song, and our handsome men gave a bow, our beautiful ladies gave a curtsey, the little boys did some funky dance moves and the little girls beautiful pirouettes.

The version that I chose to use was from the ELC CD "Fun with French".  I chose this version because it was at a good speed for non-native speakers and children alike - the versions on the French albums were just too fast really! :o)

If you have not come across this CD, it is really nice, a good selections of songs and all with an English version included to to fit to the tune.

I'm sure that everybody knows the words to this song already, but in case you don't this is how the chorus goes:

Sur le pont d'Avignon,

On y danse, on y danse,

sur le pont d'Avignon,

on y danse tous en rond.

And the verses all follow this pattern:

Les beaux messieurs font comme ça,

et puis encore comme ça!                      *This is the bit where we added our extra actions*

Clearly our craft today had to continue with the dancing theme and so we decorated some dancers with whatever we wanted from the craft table - glitter, felt, fabric petals, doilies, cupcake cases, stickers, foam, etc.  I had just printed out a variety of colouring pictures of dancers onto thin card.  Some of the children chose to add lollipop sticks to make their dancers into puppets and some decided to keep them as they were.

Here is how we got on:

We hope that you have as much fun dancing and crafting as we did! :o)