French storytime = French boring-time?

You may remember how excited I was to learn that the Boulder Public Library was offering a French storytime twice a month.

And how I promised to report back right away on what we did and how it inspired me and how it motivated Griffin to speak French with francophone children his age.

And you may have noticed that three weeks have gone by without any mention of the French storytime.

The bad news: it was not good. It was uninspired, uninteractive, and boring.

The good news: it was so bad, in fact, that another mom and I are going to start our own French storytime at the library where I work!

Delphine (the other maman, whom I know through the French playgroup on Monday mornings in Boulder) and I were commiserating afterwards about how disappointed we were:

--45 minutes where the storytime volunteer, a woman from France, just read one book after another aloud to the squirmy kids--much too long for preschoolers to sit through
--no connection among the books--just a random assortment of children's picture books and board books in French
--no songs, nursery rhymes, or fingerplays
--no involvement on the part of the children or their grown-ups
--no movement
--minimal interaction (she would occasionally ask a child to pick the next book or ask the group what color an object in an illustration was)

Delphine and I agreed on everything we didn't like about it and found ourselves saying, "We could do a better storytime than this one." And a few minutes later, we decided we should! One week later, we have obtained permission to meet at the Lafayette library on Friday afternoons twice a month to read and sing and play in French.

Our plan is to ask a different parent to lead "L'heure du livre" (or whatever we call it) each time. We'll provide a format for a 20- to 25-minute session, and they'll plug in the stories, songs, comptines, and activities. (I'll write more about my ideas for the format later.)

Of course, it's nerve-wracking to think about being in charge of a storytime that real live native-speakers of French would attend with their children: I do speak with a noticeable American accent, and I have trouble staying in tune when I sing. But Delphine said something that made me feel a lot better: she told me that she'd much rather have her daughter listen to me read books than the native speaker we endured that morning, because she's heard me read books to Griffin and has seen how I get him involved when we read together.

Besides, knowing that I'm nervous about doing this helps me empathize with other potential volunteers. And hey, if the French moms turn to each other afterwards and say, "oh là là, what an abyssmal accent this woman is exposing our enfants to," we can say, "well then we really need your help! Sign up here to lead the storytime next month."

(Suggestions for a good name for our storytime? for what we should do or not do? for how to publicize it? Please share them via your comments! And if you're a Denver-Boulder-Longmont Francophile and would like to be on our mailing list, please email me at babybilingual AT gmail DOT com.)

Follow-up: to read more about what we ended up doing for our French storytime at the Lafayette Library, click on the label "storytime" below, and you'll see all the related posts in reverse chronological order.