Children love stories, especially fairy-tales (les contes de fées) – at Franc-O-Fun we see such a perfect connection between capturing their hearts and imagination and teaching them French at the same time. We have adapted classic French (and other) traditional fairy-tales and given our students the opportunity to pretend, to role-play, to live and breathe characters that stir and excite them and to do all of this en français. The natural repetition, the desire to practice and wear costumes and to work toward a finished product for families to see, and the resulting satisfaction and sense of accomplishment all become part of the learning process and delight chez Franc-O-Fun.
We have rewritten the stories to include very practical and useful daily vocabulary: one might incorporate a whole scene about preparing dinner to bring in all the food words and phrases, another might have a scene about getting dressed or washing clothes to teach clothing vocabulary, another might talk about the weather and so forth. Many of our songs are original as well, written specifically for the children to effectively acquire certain aspects of French and to reinforce the learning through the joy and pleasure of singing.
Our story series is called “Il était une fois…” (Once upon a time) and presents a variety of creative tales tailored for specific skill levels such as Les Trois Ours (Three Bears), Les Trois Petits Chatons (Three Little Kittens), Cendrillon (Cinderella), La Petite Loco Courageuse (Little Courageous Locomotive), Le Prince Grenouille (Frog Prince) and much more…
Make-believe, fantasy and playing dress-up are all part of the magic in Franc-O-Fun's classes. Each child is actively engaged in learning French as he/she is caught up into the imagination and story that is being unfolded. The students are stretched to levels never imagined as they read, write, speak and sing French on stage. Bravo les enfants!!