Question...

[stirfry]

What are some good games for teaching a four year old francophone girl English? I'm supposed to be doing a "cours d'anglais" every Wednesday afternoon, which basically means that I play with the kid and speak in English to her for 2 hours. I haven't actually met her yet, but I'm told that whatever school she went to last year had some sort of

Comments

[stirfry]

Haha, elementary and middle schoolers will worship you, too. I don't have any board games with me and I don't really want to spend a lot of money on supplies.

[stirfry]

I might look into picture books? But again, the money.

[deetriplecee]

You'd expect I would know the answer to this or at least have some suggestions. Umm. Hmm. I tend to just let them take the lead, actually, and suggest things. Are you going to her house or is it some sort of classroom setting or she comes to you? If you've got enough props around just start off building vocab with those because they're useful everyday things plus you can touch them, play catch with them, hide and seek, etc. (Or - my favorite - get her to teach you French as you teach her English.) Ummm. Picture books are great but if her reading skills are sparse even in French, perhaps not that productive. Though you can read to her and ask her to summarize what happened in English. Or just look at the pictures and ask her to tell you about them. Depends on how much English she does end up having...

[stirfry]

I'm going to her house. I'm not sure I want to actually buy a book, but maybe if I can find something cheap and more pictures than words. Also, I'm sure she has them, but I think I might bring some paper and coloring things. This is the land of Carran d'Ache, after all.

[deetriplecee]

I'd imagine she has books. If not in English, get her to translate them from French to English - if she's that advanced. Or you can translate them or just use them to ask comprehension questions about. Anything with pictures is good. I'd guess there's some differences between teaching a little rich girl and amusing orphans like I've done, but in my experience, if it has a picture - they love it. If it's foreign - they love it even more. Even newspapers with dumb adds and absolutely random things.

Carran d'Ache?

[stirfry]

Caran d'Ache (sorry, apparently I spelled it wrong) is an expensive brand of colored pencils. In Russian, the word for pencil is карандаш, because they were the first pencils ever seen in Russia.

This city is so freaking rich. All that stuff about Swiss banks? It's because half the world's money is stored on Geneva's Rive Gauche (l'ONU and all he ONGs are on the Rive Droite). The girl's father is a professor, not a banker, though, so I think the family is more just genuinely interested in educating their kids than ridiculously rich.

[bg_luver]

Teach her songs in English.
I would do "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" since there's a French song to the same tune. And you could have her teach you that one.
Plus songs are a really good way to learn a language anyway.

[stirfry]

Oh, I like this idea.

So reading to her from picture books today was utterly boring, but she got really excited when I brought out a shiny new set of colored pencils. Also, I can now say "hippo" in French.