The weather outside is frightful, so we might as well talk about it, right? Here are some expressions to get you started with small talk in French. Please find a PDF link below, to use in your homeschool.
For more French Friday posts, please click here.
In the United States, we just celebrated Thanksgiving – a harvest feast of giving thanks for all the bounty of the land and for the goodness of God toward us. You probably took a Thanksgiving break in your homeschool. We did.
Even though they do not celebrate Thanksgiving in France, imagine explaining to a Frenchman about this American holiday. You would need some specific terms, wouldn’t you? So let’s learn some Thanksgiving vocabulary in French. Click on the link below the picture to open a PDF with printable flash cards.
Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving celebration!
For more posts in the French Friday series, please click here.
À bientôt!
Are you ready for another French lesson in your homeschool? Let’s learn the colors in French.
Colors are an important part of vocabulary in any new language. One can use colors to express so much beyond their literal meaning. For instance, our moods. One can be green with envy, red with anger, yellow with sickness, and white with fear. The ultimate color collection, the rainbow, spells hope and a new beginning.
I made flash cards for learning the colors in French. Please click below for a PDF file you can save and print.
For more French lessons from Homeschool Ways, please click here. Happy homeschooling!
Hope you had a good homeschooling week. My children have learned some new skills this week and I certainly have learned a few things myself. They say if you really want to learn something, teach it.
For today’s French lesson, I made flash cards with numbers 1-20.
Click on the link below to open the PDF file or to save it to your computer.
Hope you find this useful! For more French Friday posts, please click here.
Please leave me a comment below. Happy homeschooling!
Homeschoolers, pay attention! This is by far the most important French lesson you will ever have. Without the present tense for être and avoir, the most used and most irregular verbs in French, you will not go anywhere. Period.
Without these two verbs, you cannot express anything like “I’m hungry” or “I am twelve.” Moreover, you cannot even come close to “I have eaten” or “I have gone.” You see, être and avoir play the role of auxilliary verbs to express le passé composé (the most common French past tense).
Sorry, no shortcuts to greatness. This one must be memorized. Take five minutes in your homeschool schedule and go through these daily.
ÊTRE
je suis [zhuh sew-ee]
tu es [tew eh]
il est / elle est [eel eh] / [ehl eh]
nous sommes [nooh sohm]
vous êtes [voohz-eht] – Notice how the s sounds like a z and it connects the two words. Most words ending in s in French will connect audibly as a z sound to the next word, if the latter begins with a vowel.
ils sont / elles sont [eel sohn] / [ehl sohn] In case you don’t know, n is a very nasal n sound.
AVOIR
j’ai [jeh]
tu as [tew ah]
il a / elle a [eel ah] / [ehl ah]
nous avons [nooz-avohn]
vous avez [vooz-aveh]
ils ont / elles ont [eelz-ohn] / [ehlz-ohn]
C’est tout. That’s it. Memorize these two verbs until you know them like the back of your hand. They will serve you well for the rest of your French lessons. The more you practice, the easier it will be to build on this foundation.
For other French Friday posts, click here. Happy homeschooling!
Hello again, on a French Friday morning. Or, should I say, Bon matin (Good morning)! Do you have ten minutes in your homeschooling schedule to squeeze in a bit of French? Oui? (Yes?) Très bien, alors! (Very well, then!)
Have you always wanted to learn French but never knew where to start? Wonder no more. Here are the Top 10 most frequently used French words, according to Gougenheim 2.00 – Fréquences orales et de production. Please find the pronunciation guide within [ ] and the English translation after the equal sign.
1. le [luh], la [lah], l’ [l], les [lay] = the (definite article)
Can you believe French has four words where English only has one? That’s because French nouns are masculine (le), feminine (la), begin with a vowel (which makes le/la drop their own vowels and become l’), or need a plural article when they are in the plural form (les).
2. être [eh-tr] = to be (verb)
3. avoir [ah-vwahr] = to have (verb)
4. de [duh] = of, from (preposition)
5. un [uhn], une [yewn], des [day] = a, an, some (indefinite article) Masculine nouns in French require “un”, feminine nouns require “une” and plurals call for “des.”
6. je [zhuh] = I (subject pronoun)
7. il/ils [eel] = he, it / they (subject pronouns)
8. ce [suh] = this (indefinite demonstrative pronoun)
9. pas [pah] = not (negative adverb)
10. à [ah] = to, in (preposition)
Please let me know what kind of resources would best work for your French-learning needs in your homeschool. For more French Friday lessons, click here. À bientôt! (See you soon!)
Last Friday, I started a series of French lessons which I plan to turn into a permanent tab on my blog. Homeschooling would not be complete without at least one foreign language, right?
Today, let’s look at one of the most famous French songs ever: Alouette. Children use this song to learn the names of body parts in French.
Refrain: Alouette, gentille alouette,
Alouette, je te plumerai.
1. Je te plumerai la tête. x2
Et la tête! Et la tête!
Alouette! Alouette!
A-a-a-ah
Refrain
2. Je te plumerai le bec. x2
Et le bec! x2
Et la tête! x2
Alouette! x2
A-a-a-ah
Refrain
Body parts in French, on a lark (alouette)
3. Je te plumerai les yeux. x2
Et les yeux! x2
Et le bec! x2
Et la tête! x2
Alouette! x2
A-a-a-ah
Refrain
Repeat the above with: le cou, les ailes, les pattes, la queue, le dos.
Literally, the song says, “Lark, lovely lark, I will pluck the feathers off your head, beak, eyes, neck, wings, feet, tail, back.”
To sing Alouette in English, use
Little skylark, lovely little skylark,
Little skylark, I’ll pluck your feathers off.
I’ll pluck the feathers off your head, x2
Off your head, x2
Little lark, x2
O-o-o-oh etc
Apparently, a lark woke the song writer up one morning and he was not an early bird (no pun intended) or a card-carrying member of PETA. He calls the lark “lovely” or “nice” (gentille) though, which intrigues me. The song may have originated in France, but it is also attributed to Québec, the French-speaking Canadian province.
To hear the pronunciation, here’s a youtube video with a kid-friendly arrangement. Hope this little French song enriches your homeschool day!
For my Friday post, I decided to upload a couple of resources for learning French. These are for you to use in your homeschool or after school language learning efforts. For more French Friday resources, click here.
I made some flash cards for you to download and print. The PDF links are below. You can use them with either reading or non-reading students. The first page of each PDF file will give you instructions on how to incorporate them in your daily routine, but I am sure you can figure other ways to use them.
If you need further help with the pronunciation, – and who doesn’t? – click on the youtube videos. I chose some neat songs to help reinforce pronunciation and help with memorization. We retain information better if we learn it in a song.
I placed the videos right here for your convenience. Feel free to bookmark this post and come back to it as needed.
My plan is to create more of these lessons and upload them all in a special tab by themselves on my blog. Coming soon. Sign up for email updates so you don’t miss it.
Until then, enjoy the days of the week as well as the months of the year in French below.
Click on the PDF link under each picture and save and print your flash cards as needed. The pronunciation video follows.
Days of the Week in French PDF link
Months of the Year in French PDF link
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What a fun activity to add to your calendar moments every morning. For five minutes a day, you and your homeschooling students can solidify French knowledge and stimulate neurons. Enjoy!