It’s the start of a new year, it’s 2016 and we have come a long way since 2005 with developing our unique and dynamic curriculum and teaching method.  Petits Poussins is different in many ways, and apart from our fun and enthusiasm for languages, we don’t speak any English to teach your child French.  We believe that if you are going to learn a language, total immersion is the key.  Each week we teach 100′s of children and if we are totally honest with you, there’s many emotions we feel; however, one of them is ‘blessed’ and the other is ‘amazement’.

To put that into context, when children and adults follow our ‘Making Languages Fun’ learning programme it is like watching little happy angels soaking up every bit of joy, laughter and language in our teaching sessions.  We are witnesses all day, every day to the saying ’children are like sponges’.

As many of you know we teach from birth in our Parent and Toddler sessions, in fact in any of our sessions we advocate that language acquisition of additional languages should be started from as early an age as possible. Just as you do with your child’s mother tongue, they are hard wired to absorb it all!

So have you ever wondered how we teach your child, or what your children learn in our sessions, or how you can get involved, please have fun watching our video, let us know what you think!  If you would like more, let us know and if you would like to see our teaching in our ‘live classes’ or training for your school or educational establishment, we would be happy to help!  After all, the more people who get involved the bigger our chances of realising our dream of creating that revolution in the way modern foreign languages are taught in the UK…or maybe even across the globe! Pourquoi pas!

There are a few versions of the song, as usual we have added a #MakingLanguagesFun twist to it and we have modified the end of the song. We shout “tombez!” which means “fall” and we all fall, ‘splash’ into ‘la rivière’ – the river.

It’s also great bath time song and all of our children and families love it.

Sit your child on your knee and ‘row’ your boat until you fall ‘splash’ in the ‘la rivière’

You could also say ‘vite’ [veet] – which means ‘quick or fast’ to reinforce every day commands whilst injecting our motto of #MakingLanguagesFun into your game!

In our sessions children initially learn to count from 1-10, but we offer progression through out our classes and reinforce and build upon important vocabulary.  We always enrich learning by enhancing their vocabulary and taking them to the next level.  We often find really young children who are able to count really well in French.  Check out some of our video clips of our the videos on our social media sites that many of our parents have kindly shared with us!

Did you know that it is highly important that your child can count effectively to 20 in French as numbers are quite different once they go above 69 – soixante-neuf [swass-ante-neuf].  The next number literally translates as sixty-ten, soixante-dix [swassante-deess] and this is how you say seventy in French! It is followed by sixty-eleven,ie 71, soixante-onze [swassante-onz], then sixty-twelve ie 72, soixante-douze [swassante-dooz] and so on until you reach sixty-nineteen ie 79, soixante-dix-neuf [swassante dees neuf]!

Enjoy the song and please feel free to share your videos of your own children singing!  We just love it seeing how well everyone is progressing and #MakingLanguagesFun!

https://youtu.be/x4ayzlhMrZM

At Petits Poussins everything we do is interactive and upholds our motto of ‘Making Languages Fun!’ Think back to when you were at school or any time you had to learn something, a little bit of fun or a lot (in our case) injected into your learning experience changes how you learn and retain what you have been taught.  We tap into all learning styles, including children with special education needs, we advocate that everyone is capable of learning a foreign language, without exception!

Les roues [lay roo] – the wheels

L’autobus [lohto-bewss] – the bus

Toute au tour de la ville [toot oh toor deuh la veel] – all around the town

Les essuie-glaces [layz ess-wee glass]- the windscreen wipers

La porte [la port] – the door

Les sous [lay soo] – the money

Le klaxon [leuh klaxohn]- the horn

L’essence [less-ohnss]- the petrol

One song that sticks in everyone’s head in our sessions and provides lots of fun learning for our children is ‘Jean Petit qui Danse.’

The song is great for all ages to learn the body parts in French, from toddlers to GCSE students and even adults!

The song speeds up as it advances and provides a real test on the children’s ability to remember the song words, and even test our bilingual teachers delivering the classes! Give it a go and enjoy interacting with your children.  Here’s the words just in case you need a ‘coup de main’ a helping hand!

Check out the link to the video clip, le camion de pompier- the fire engine.

Leo is a curious truck and he has parts loaded on his back.  What is he going to make with the parts?  Enjoy watching the videoclip with your Peits Poussins and dicuss the vocabulary with them.  Remember it’s all about Making Languages Fun!

le camion [leuh camee-ohn] the truck

la voiture [lah vwa-tewr] the car

le camion de pompier [leuh camee-ohn deuh pomp-ee-ay] the fire truck

un [uhn] – one

deuc [deuh] -two

trois [twra] – three

les sièges [lay see-ej] the seats

le volant [leuh voh-lohn] the steering wheel

une cabine rouge [oon cabeen rooj] – a red cabin

un pare-choc en avant [uhn par-shock ohn avahn] – the front bumper

trois roues [trwa roo]  three wheels

à côté [ah coat-ay] to the side

les ailes [layz elss] the wings

la citerne-d’eau [lah see-tern doh] – the water tank

l’échelle [lay shell] the ladder

le girophare [leuh geero-far] the flashing light

Take a seat with your Petits Poussins and have 10 minutes watching and talking about the video clip we are sharing about transport – les transports [lay trahn-spor]. See how many words you can both recall.

Les transports is our theme for the half term and we will be posting more resources that will help you to expose your child to language learning outwith our classes.  If you have any questions or we can help in any way, please do not hesitate to ask.  Our staff are all bilingual and have an array of teaching, parenting and language experience.

Merci beaucoup! x

Les Transports – source le monde des petits

Je te plumerai le nez!

As part of our Petits Poussins Parent Partnership program with Kids 1st we have been conducting Parent open days so that the parents can come and see the progress and fun their children have in their French sessions.

What a great session we had today at Kids 1st Darlington!  As I arrived at the session I could not believe the turn out,  Sébastien got himself all nervous when he saw all the mamans, papas et la grandmère!  I was thrilled with the support for the session, my favourite bit was the children tapping ‘mon nez’ with ‘les plumes’ (feathers) for our body part song!

It was so exciting to be able to show the parents that Petits Poussins’ curriculum is not only about learning a load of nouns, that the children learn real day to day French using total immersion, so we only speak in the target language.  There was none more proud than I, when I asked one of our Petits Poussins to ask her friend across the room “what is your name?” in French…”va demander comment tu t’appelles?” I said, and off she went to ask her petit ami “comment tu t’appelles?” to which he responded “Je m’appelle….”

You have to bear in mind that these children are 3 and 4 years old and I only ever address them in French.  It’s incredible to see!  I hope that the parents enjoyed it as much as the staff, Sébastien and I did!  One of the parents told me that her children have little French conversations with one another now!  We are so grateful to the support of the parents who encourage their children at home, downloading the songs and apps we blog about.

Petits Poussins and Kids 1st staff have a real partnership going on.  We train the staff as we teach, to reinforce what we are teaching the children during the week until our next weekly session.  The staff are absolutely fantastique across the group and work so hard, even when they have never learned a word of French in their lives, it’s commendable and we are so grateful of their hard work.

As with all of our nurseries we work with, we help them to create French wall displays that reflect what the children have been learning and ensure that we link our curriculum with their lesson plans and the EYFS as much as possible. So if the children are learning about the weather we always try and link it with our theme and throw in something about the weather in French.

If you’d like to leave us some feedback we would be so grateful and we always love to see videoclips of the children at home!

merci beaucoup!

http://youtu.be/u1wROm-OF9w

When will it stop, we have already seen a reduction in the number of children in schools taking up GCSE languages, if at all, now our University students are doing the same.  It is so worrying!

Have a read and let us know your thoughts.

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jan/31/drop-in-university-language-applications