Kid Friendly Thanksgiving Place Settings

We have wonderful neighbors.  They're French and she loves to cook.  Every Thanksgiving they invite us over for an amazing 5 course meal.  It's the best thing ever because the food is astounding, you can't beat the commute, and we even get a plate of leftovers without the clean up.  In true holiday fashion, it's an all afternoon affair so it's a bit hard on the kids - lots of adults talking with not much to do.  Two years ago I started making their table a workspace after being inspired by an article in Southern Living.  

Image Source:  Southern Living November 2010

The kids were put at their own table anyway so I went over the night before to set their table.  I covered the table in paper and then traced and labeled all their dishes and put a menu checklist like in the picture above.  The first year it was all in English and I was hoping it'd help a bit with the what dish do you use when problem.  They got a pile of pens to draw anywhere on the table they wanted when they were bored.

 Last year I did the same thing but labeled everything on the table in french.  The dishes, the menu, and a few phrases such as "J'en veux encore un peu." et "Comme c'est bon!".

This year, I'm labeling the table in French with last year's ideas, but I've also made up a leaf book for each of them to write in.  Older Toad's is labeled 'I am Thankful' and we'll encourage him to think about the holiday and hopefully be grateful for such nice neighbors.  Younger Toad gets some Thanksgiving stickers for his.  The leaf shapes were a freebie from Teachers Pay Teachers.  I formatted them to the right size, printed them out, cut and bound them.  The kids will get markers again too.

I thought it was a fun idea.  The kids have enjoyed it and obviously you could take the basic idea and do lots of different things with it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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Please Tell us about Your Country - French Edition

The original post to see what this project is about is here.

The French embassy was kind enough to send us:

• Paris Map – This is a great little map because it places the famous French monuments on the map with a little image of the structure. It'a mini Beaux Arts map.

• News from France – A monthly review of French news & trends

• A brochure for Tivi 5 Monde – French TV. This was the Toads' favorite thing.

• A French highway map.

• A business card with the French embassy's social media addresses.

• A booklet on the European Union – This would be great information for older kids, especially with the recent Nobel award.

Merci Beaucoup!

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Etiquettes pour une carte du monde

We are studying French for our foreign language so I try to adapt some of the activities we do in English to French.  The basics of world geography seemed liked a good activity to do in both languages.  I worked up map labels below that mirror Montessori Printshop's free Globe, Continent and Ocean Map Labels.


World Map Labels French

Vie de Mer

This is the French component of our activity at the Florida Aquarium.

You can read the main post for the description of how we used this here.  Below are the cards for basic marine life in English with the corresponding French words.

vie de mer

Paris Metro

This is a worksheet I made up to go with our train workbook.

I got to show older toad my stubs from riding the metro and the conversation really turned into more about why don't we get to ride the train here instead of him being enraptured by my tales of Paris.  I can't compete against trains so here you go.  We filled it in in French of course.
  Paris Metro Map

Paris faites de papier

Older toad studied French this year for a foreign language.  I studied French in school, have been to France and we have wonderful French neighbors who agreed to help a little bit so it was a natural fit.  However it's hard to find fun, non drill based foreign language activities for early learners.  Ideally something younger toad can do a little bit, I can supervise with my very rusty skills and and older toad does learn a little from.

I ran across Joel Henriques website somehow surfing the web.  His Paris paper toy is really creative and was a big hit.  We did some family coloring time and older toad took it over to the neighbors to play with the frogs.

I checked out his book and the mini animals were my favorite.  I've added a wood burning tool to my acquisition list so we can do some.  Bon Voyage!