French learning activities for children

Website design By BotEap.comHave you ever considered trying to teach your child a foreign language, but gotten put off because it feels like too much of a challenge? Here are some simple language learning activity ideas for parents, childminders, preschool practitioners… with a few practical ideas, anyone can start teaching French to their children, regardless of their language ability.

Website design By BotEap.comWhen it comes to introducing a foreign language to your child, it is really difficult to know where to start, especially if you want to start from a very young age and especially if you are not fluent in the language you would like to introduce. It can be an exhausting process searching the internet to find products that make the learning process fun and accessible for both children and parents, and can sometimes be expensive if you want to buy all the DVDs and CDs on offer, and even then, how to do it? Do you know that these products will work and are right for you?

Website design By BotEap.comThe key to remember with your child’s language learning is to make any activity simple and fun, and you don’t have to spend a lot of time doing it to get results; just 10 minutes a day is enough. With just a few sentences, he can develop a small but very rewarding conversation.

Website design By BotEap.comWhile it’s nice to have the support of language learning DVDs and bilingual books and CDs, you could end up spending a lot of money on a collection of these things that are eventually forgotten because they can be confusing or boring for your child or maybe just too difficult for parents and children.

Website design By BotEap.comHowever, you can find all kinds of FREE language learning products around the house.And with a little creativity, the amount of vocabulary and simple phrases you can use with them to teach a bit of French, or any language, is huge!

Website design By BotEap.comI want to share with you a toy that we have been playing with a lot in our house and some of the language practices that we have been doing with it during a recent midterm break. After a week of simple play based on this toy for just about 10 – 15 minutes a day my three-year-old son and I were able to communicate in French using simple sentences.

Website design By BotEap.comThe toy we have been using is simple stackable cups. Ours consist of ten cups in various colors with the numbers 1-10 printed on the bottom.

Website design By BotEap.comHere is a list of the French language that you can practice using the cups:

• Counting.
• Practice your numbers from 1 to 10: one two three FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN
• Asking ‘how many?’

Website design By BotEap.comThe French word for ‘a cup’ is a cup – you can ask ‘how many cups are there?’: How many cups are there? At first, your child would probably respond with just the number, but if you wanted to model a more sophisticated response, you could say there are three cups ‘there are three cups’, or there are three ‘There are three of them.’

• colors

Website design By BotEap.comTo ask what the color is, you can ask What color is it? ‘What color is it? Here are some colors in English:

Website design By BotEap.comYellow – yellow, Red -red, green – green, blue – blue, orange – orange, White white – white, black – black, purple -purple

Website design By BotEap.comTo say the color you can say is yellow ‘is yellow’, it’s red ‘is red.

Website design By BotEap.com* Bowl is a feminine noun, and in French adjectives mostly change to agree with the masculine or feminine. When talking about the cups, to be exact, these colors change their pronunciation to agree: green, white, black, purple.

• hiding the cups

Website design By BotEap.comYou can hide the cups or just ask your child to point to which cup is which by asking where they are: Where is the red cup? ‘Where is the red cup?’ Where is the green cup? ‘Where is the green cup?’

Website design By BotEap.comThese are just a few of the things you can talk about when playing with the cups and of course with lots of silliness and games along the way your child will have no idea that they are learning because they will have so much fun.

Website design By BotEap.comEven if you think your French skills are not that great, give it a try! The more French you use, the more confident you’ll feel, and when your child starts repeating French words to you, he’ll feel like a great teacher!

Website design By BotEap.comThese activities are also worth doing even if your child doesn’t speak English at all yet. Just hearing the words is enough to keep their minds open to the different sounds of the language and hearing them from the mouth of a live speaker is hugely beneficial to their language development.

Website design By BotEap.comSo was he right? Do you have stackable cups? Let me know what you think of these ideas and what toys you use around the house to play with language.