Andrew and French Club

I have often heard that seven years old is a great age for teaching a language. Well, I have wanted to teach Andrew the french language for many years. Something I was blessed in learning from a mission that I did for my church.

To sit Andrew down and just teach him a language seemed a bit difficult and boring to me. So, I began to think about it and came up with Friday French club. I thought of inviting four of his friends who are seven and eight year olds to join us and teach them French. Having a four month old baby made me realize that I would need to keep it very simple. So, I decided to only teach them one or two things at a time.

The first week arrived three weeks ago and we have had so much fun and have had so much success. Seven and eight year olds can think a bit more abstract but still it is fun to create games out of it. Our first week was focused on learning the Alphabet. To learn this, I first wrote the letters down and had them repeat after me. This could help those visual learners in the room. In order to catch the auditory learners, I reinforced what we were learning by playing a song on CD with the ABC's and numbers and we sang it over and over until the children were no longer interested. In order to catch those kinesthetic learners, I had us dance all around as we sang the song. I could tell that all the children were engaged in this activity including me. Something I long to see in children. We then got in a circle and through a ball from one to another as we said the alphabet. From this, my hope was that I was able to teach all the children through their individual learning style (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic). By the end of class, the children were able to say their alphabet and even began to learn some of the numbers which would be for the following week. I also introduced some phrases for them that they could go home and use with their parents and family.

We then celebrated by going swimming. Something to look forward to for participating. The children said that they would love to come the next week. Yay! Another success.