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!

Mushroom update

Well - the update is that no ambulance was required, so the purple mushrooms (which have turned brown on cooking - how boring!) will be on offer to all who wish this evening.

There's not much chance of poisoning Bee as he won't touch them, but Dragonfly is quite keen. She's always liked mushrooms and, when she was small, she called them 'champions' instead of 'champignons' in French, which seemed quite an appropriate mispronunciation given her enthusiasm for the things. During this phase, Bee was once called a champion for doing something impressive (running? jumping?), but was  totally unimpressed as he thought he was being called a mushroom.

Bayard / Milan addicts

One of my favourite French kids' resources has always been Bayard Presse's magazines. My brothers and I subscribed to these for years when we were growing up bilingually and I'm glad to say they're still going strong as my kids love them!

I took out my first subscription (to Popi) for Dragonfly when she was about 1. She mainly chewed and tore her magazine at the beginning, but we persevered and she grew big enough to engage with the book in less physical ways. We've subscribed to a magazine for her ever since and then added a suitable subscription for Bee when he was old enough. Soon we'll have tried them all!

Bayard has now merged with Milan Jeunesse, so they now have an even more bewildering choice of magazines on offer (see the whole list here: http://www.frenchmagforkids.com/collection_mag.html). 

This choice, combined with two imperfectly coordinated subscription sources (my mother and myself!), means that we now have 4 of these magazines landing on our doormat every month! That's on top of the entire back collection of 'J'Aime Lire' books from when we were small ... But I can't complain: the magazines are great. Bee loves his animal magazine Wakou and enjoys seeing how he is now too big for Babar. Both Dragonfly and Bee enjoy Youpi (a Grandma gift). And J'aime Lire is Dragonfly's favourite and one of the main reasons she has managed to transfer most of her reading skills from English to French and can now read in French for pleasure. Hooray!

In addition, much to Bee-the-technology-addict's delight, these subscriptions also come with a web-based subscription to 'BayaM' with games, little films etc. so there is even an interactive element for demanding 21st Century children.

So I'm sure we'll be taking out a subscription for Butterfly when the time comes ...

Do you have any favourite French resources?