"guest post" by Griffin: on the idea of a petite soeur

Lots of people have asked me how Griffin feels about becoming a big brother, so I thought I'd try to imagine what he's thinking based on his recent actions and comments....

My maman is enceinte, which means that there's a baby growing in her belly and it's going to get bigger and come out and be a little girl. I like to put Bear under my shirt and tell people that Bear is my baby and he lives in my belly button and he'll get bigger and come out. Bear grows faster than my petite soeur so he usually gets born a minute or two after I hide him under my shirt.

She sure is taking a long time to grow. Maybe that's why Maman is so tired and cranky all the time. She sure doesn't like it when I take a Very Long Time to do something like get dressed or eat my beans. But there are always so many other interesting things to do and say and watch and play with--beans and shoes just aren't very important to me. I wish my sister would stop making Maman cry. What's a hormone?

Sometimes I put Bear back under my shirt so he can drink my lolo like my baby cousin does with Tatie Elizabeth. I'm not sure where the lolo comes from but it's apparently quite important. One day Bear went under my shirt to drink l'eau instead of lolo and Maman and Daddy laughed when I told them that Bear was getting water from the water fountain. I mean, where else do you get water from?!

People keep congratulating me when we tell them that I'm going to have a little sister. I didn't think I had anything to do with it, but maybe so? Either way, I'm starting to feel proud. I'm a big boy who can go pipi in the pot and sleep in a lit du grand garçon and have a baby. Telling people about my petite soeur makes me laugh now. People laugh when I tell them that I want to be a mommy, so now I just say that I want to be a daddy.

But I guess I have to learn how to be a grand frère first. There sure are a lot of things we have to learn!

It really made Maman laugh when we told the mommies at my playgroup. They were all staring at us and saying "Well?"and she whispered a question in my in my ear to try to get me to announce it, "Tu vas avoir un petit frère ou une petite soeur?" and I was embarassed but I said "une petite soeur" and they all shouted hooray and I heard one of the mommies say to another one, "Does soeur mean 'sister'?" and the other mommy was wrong because she said "No, it means 'brother'" and a third mommy said "Oh, okay" and then the fourth mommy and my maman told them they were wrong and that a soeur is a sister which means the baby is a girl baby and then the mommies went crazy shouting hooray and told me "good job, Griffin!"

I think my maman's friends need to learn to speak French too. Then I will tell them "bon travail."

One day when my maman was frustrée she looked at all the books on my floor and told me that my room was a désastre. Well, what does she expect? That's what happens when you read to me all the time and teach me to love books and tell me to look at books when I take my nap. I have to keep getting out of my bed to find more books and of course I'm going to throw them on the floor because I'm a little boy and I like to throw things and if I leave them on the floor long enough then someone will put them all away for me.

So Maman said that we had Too Many Books and that my petite soeur doesn't have any and shouldn't we pick out some books for her room too? Well of course she needs to have lots of books too so that she can learn to throw them on the floor and train Maman to pick them up for her.

So we looked at all my books together. Whenever we saw a book that just had one picture and one word on a page, Maman asked me if it was a baby book that we could give to the petite soeur and I said "Oui" and we made a big pile of books that are too babyish for a grand garçon like me. Except some of the baby books I wanted to keep anyway and she said that was okay too.

And then I saw Bear and decided that we could give Bear to the petite soeur so that she wouldn't have to be alone in her bed, but that made Maman cry too and she said that Bear was my best friend and he would be sad if he didn't get to sleep with me. So I put Bear under my shirt to drink my lolo and told Maman that we could give Daddy's rhinocéros to the baby instead.

She didn't know what I meant so I reminded her that Daddy bought a purple animal with a horn like a rhinocéros for the baby at the store with all the pillows and then Maman laughed and taught me the word licorne which means unicorn.

It turns out that they are calling the baby "Unicorn" right now, which sounds kind of silly to me, but my parents are Very Silly People. But I have a better name in mind. When they asked me what we should name the baby, I said "Zoo" because that is a very good place.

It will be a Very Good Name for a Very Good Baby and I will be a Very Good Grand Frère.

guest post: puppets, songs, and worksheets for preschool French

Meet Céline Mazoyer, a French native living in North Carolina who studied in France, Romania, England, and the US. She has a BA in English and an MA in Teaching French as a Foreign Language. She has taught middle and high school, given private lessons, and worked as an online coach and tutor for Auralog. And she and her Romanian husband are expecting their first child this summer, whom they plan to raise multilingually!

As I am very interested in learning more about teaching languages to preschoolers, I asked Céline if she'd be willing to tell us more about her tutoring sessions with two young brothers. Here's what she had to say, along with a sample lesson plan.

I have been working with two young boys (now two and a half and four years old) for a few months now to introduce them to the French language. Fayetteville, NC, is close to the very important army base Fort Bragg. Many people who live in town have had the opportunity to spend some time in Europe because of their job in the army. The boys' father works in the army and they spent a few years in Italy. They would like to go back to Europe and so their mom wanted to introduce the boys to a new language, either French or Italian, but she said she had difficulties finding a tutor.

We meet for an hour every week and here is what we did during our last lesson. It will give you an idea of what we like to do together.

I have tried since the beginning to install some routine and have been using a puppet to start our sessions. So we like to use Jerome, our snail puppet, with whom we introduce vocabulary and review the expressions we have learned. We usually say “bonjour,” “comment ça va,” “ça va bien” (which we learned here).

We have been introducing a few fruits’ names lately so we presented Jerome with some fruits (I used cards but it would be even better with plastic or real fruits) to see what he likes, allowing us to see “j’aime,” “je n’aime pas.” The boys may not repeat the words for the first time they hear it but I do not force them, it usually comes naturally when they are ready.

To continue working on fruits, we played a fruit bingo game with the eldest. The youngest brought a game that allowed us to reinforce the colors. He does not repeat the colors in French, and still barely knows them in English, so I just repeated them aloud as he was playing. This way he gets used to the sounds of French. Then his mom played some French music for him while I was working with the eldest.

I don’t do that very often, but this time I printed a couple of worksheets for him to choose from. On one we counted aloud in French to add fruits. So far we have learned to count up to ten, but the total number of fruits we had on our worksheet was much bigger. So I went up to “onze,” and after asking me what “onze” meant, he counted without difficulty with me up to “vingt,” twenty – which made me very proud! On the other worksheet we colored the biggest item given among the three; I am slowly introducing him to the difference between “petit” and “grand.”

To finish we played one of our favorite songs of the moment “Tape, tape petites mains” that I introduced when learning about animals.

We had a great time! Our sessions really vary in activities depending on how the boys feel. It is really hard to keep the attention of children so young so I try to bring as much as I can to make sure we won’t get bored. Luckily our library has a French children’s book section and we are able to have a story time from time to time. I try to borrow books that match the topics we cover together and the boys’ interests. The last books I have borrowed were about dinosaurs; the boys are just fond of them right now and really love “Dinodor.”

Their mom is doing a great job working with them during the week to reinforce what we see together, playing our songs, watching their favorite cartoons in French, which really makes a difference.

I really learn a lot every session we have together. It is so great seeing them both progress, getting more confident with the language and being able to pronounce words and expressions with a clearer accent than most adult learners! It is very impressive!

Merci mille fois, Céline! (By the way, I would love for my children to take lessons with you!)