French with Children

This is a picture of the delicious spread of French snacks that we made with the little ones this morning! From the top left going clockwise, there are Cheese thins, White Bean Puree, Basil Parmiers and Goats Cheese with Honey and Thyme.  Just a few notes to add that we left the mustard and the cayenne pepper out of the cheese thins to make them cheesy instead of spicy, and we used smaller pieces of goats cheese than those pictured.  We also did half basil and half sun dried tomatoes for the palmiers as that's what we had!  the children enjoyed joining in the processes and loved tasting them afterwards!

One of my mindees went to France last week with her mum so I decided to do a few french inspired activities with the children.  At first I planned for a week but they have enjoyed the language side so much that I am planning to run it alongside 'normal' service for as long as they want to!  I printed out some posters from i-child on French language, mainly as a prompt for me but they have acted as conversation starters too! I printed animals, clothes, family and greetings.  I have started with Bonjour, Comment ca va? Ca va bien, merci, and the children love it.  This morning when we went to join friends to cook, my littlest mindee (not yet two) was greeted with 'Bonjour' and she replied 'bonjour'....... how wonderful!  The children have also been using 'Bon appetit' at mealtimes!

Tomorrow we are going to use red white and blue to create representations of the tricolore.  I have felt really inspired to find more activities for the children to explore alongside the language.  http://www.instantdisplay.co.uk/ has printouts for drinks that you could order from a French cafe.  I think that this will be a fun twist on the usual activity that the role-play corner sees!