Penpals

We're having a bit of follow up success on the 'finding French children to interact with' front.

This summer, Dragonfly went to a kids' day camp while we were on holiday in France. One of the aims (other than giving her the opportunity to do cool stuff like white water rafting and donkey riding!) was to increase her exposure to French, and in particular to enable her to interact with French kids.

And it seemed to work! Dragonfly came home each afternoon chatting away in a higher pitched voice than usual and using new phrases like 'hyper' ('j'avais hyper peur'). I was expecting the new vocabulary, but was intrigued about the new girly voice. Is it the case that French girls use a higher pitch generally than English girls? Does anyone have this experience with other languages? Something to investigate.

Anyway, to 'return to our sheep' (as the French would say), not only did Dragonfly chat away to French kids, she also made a new friend and we managed to arrange a few playdates. We swapped addresses and returned home ... and this is where the follow up success comes in: Dragonfly liked my suggestion that she might send her new friend a postcard (in French!), so we did that, and a few weeks later got a response! Dragonfly is so excited to be getting her own letters in the post she's already started drafting another letter. There's nothing like making language 'real' to increase motivation!