ce sont les vacanes~ youpi~

candies from my kids.

i don't know how hard it is for a kid to share his candies.

but it was so touching when julie gave me all her chocolates.

and yesterday, after the gouter de noel.

leho gave me a piece of his mandarin.

it was so sweet. :)

dear santa,

if you really exist, please do not read the following, for what my kids said might bother you (a tiny bit).

two more days till xmas break, you would be crazy to try and teach them anything at all.

so with my little ones, i just did what i've done on monday, again.

but it just got super hilarious.

i drew a xmas tree, a xmas gift, an angel, a father xmas (i insisted on using this term cos that's what's written in the textbook, sure, rolling eyes), a xmas pudding.

after having gone over all of them first, i asked them one by one by pointing at the pictures on the board.

"penelope, qu'est-ce que c'est?" pointing at father xmas. (what's this?)

"pere noel."

"oui, c'est le pere noel, mais en anglais?" (yes, you're right, but in english?)

"euh, poisson?" (hm, fish?)

"presque, mais non." (close, but no.)

"papa noel?"

"non. c'est fa__ xmas?"

"euh, far-par xmas?"

"non."

"far-mar xmas?"

...

"theo, qu'est-ce que c'est?" pointing at the xmas tree.

"pere noel!"

"c'est pas vrai! regards, c'est quoi encore?" (you're kidding, look, what's this again?)

"euh, un sapin." (hmm, a xmas tree.)

"oui, tres bien, mais en anglais?" (very good, but in english?)

"say-pain?"

"non."

"sar-peen?"

"non! mais non! ca commence avec xmas tch..."

"kway-mah-s tchoo?"

"kris-mah-s tch-ree."

"kway-mah tch-ree."

...

"comment on dit pere noel en anglais?" (how do you say 'pere noel' in english?)

"je sais je sais! c'est penguin!" (i know i know, it's penguin!)

"peut-etre pas. le pere noel, il est pas de noir et blanc." (maybe not, he's not black and white."

"euh, c'est quoi deja?" (what's that again?)

"farther xmas."

"far-ar, kay-mar."

so yeah, he could well be anything, a fish, a sapin (xmas tree), a penguin!

but hey, at least they still believe in father xmas!

this is official...

i've bonded with my kids.

when they see me, they'll run to me with open arms wearing the biggest smiles.

and they'll also ask for a bisous.

once one kid does that, a couple of other kids will come and ask for a bisous too. (peer pressure?)

i love how they're so impressed with the tiniest presents that i gave them today.

they were so excited and happy that they got "caddles" (read: caddle = cadeau according to my kids) in so much advance.

i like how they said 'thank you' without knowing what it means.

and how they sang 'wee wooo weee ya mey-yee koo-mah-yees" while lining up to go down for lunch.

bonnes fetes mes ptits!

un accent japonais?

i think the english pronunciation of "R" might be just as hard for the french as it is in french for their english speaking counterparts.

some of my kids didn't get fRance correctly.

it was okay with me, they can pass with pronouncing france as it is in french and we'll totally understand them.

but somehow, the fact that they are pronouncing R as L makes me curious.

where, on earth, did they get that idea from?

okay, i might not have a perfect oxford accent.

but hey, i can pronounce fRance as how it should be done, the british way, too.

i noticed this problem when i introduced them "i am french and i am from france."

now it is rather annoying hearing them saying "meh-lli kah-lees-mah-yee-s".

and my little girl M, she insisted on singing "i wish you a merry xmas" instead of "we".

okay, yes, got it, you, yourself, one person, mademoiselle M, wants to wish me a happy xmas.

thanks hun.

fLance

mr panda has already come to all the classes and is rather popular.

more so than i am, i'd say.

cos everyone thinks that he's cute.

my cp kids even asked if they could kiss him.

and after i granted them permission, they lined up to kiss him.

so adorable.

mr panda introduced himself by stating his name, his age and where he's from.

i asked my kids to interact with mr panda.

"good afternoon."

"gut after-nouille."

"what's your name?"

"what's your name?" (omg, not again! we're back to square one?)

before i corrected him, he went on "my name is mathias."

"tres bien, mais, c'est bon de dire 'my name is mathias'. on a pas besoin de repeter la question. " （very good, but just saying 'my name is mathias' is enough, no need to repeat the question.)

"how old are you?"

"i am fine."

euh, i think this kid would do rather well being a politician.

"non, how old are you, ca veut dire t'as quel age." (no, that means how old are you?)

"ah, je sais, j'ai 7 ans."

"en anglais!"

"c'est quoi deja?" (what's that already?)

"i~am~."

"i am sept ans!"

"euh, ca, c'est franglais!" (um, this is franglais!)

"okay, kids, do we still remember our numbers? one, two... d'accord, tu veux le refaire?" (do you want to do it again?)

"j'ai seven!"

oh-la-la.

"i am seven!"

"i am seven."

phew~

"now, where are you from?"

"i am france?" and he said france in french.

"c'est bien ca, la france est un pays, t'es ton pays?" (this is good, france is a country, you're your country?)

"euh..."

"i am FROM france."

"i am flom flance."

"i am fRom fRance."

"i am fRom fLance."

"FRANCE."

"france." (in french)

oh i give up.

the new tricolour flag

with the cp's we started doing colours.

"what colour is this?" i raised a piece of blank paper.

"il y a rien!" (there's nothing.)

"tres bien, il y a rien, donc, c'est de quelle couleur?" (very good, there's nothing, so what colour is this?)

"blanc!" (white)

"it's white in english, repeat after me, white!"

"white~"

couple of minutes later, we were revising what we had already done.

"what colour is this?"

"blue!"

"tres bien, blue."

"what colour is this?"

"rouge."

"en anglais!"

"laid?"

"mais non!" (no~)

"looood?"

"non!"

"loud?"

"non, red!"

"okay, what colour is this?"

"blue!"

"non, c'est pas blue!" (no, it's not blue.)

"blah?"

"yes i'd agree with you, this colour is rather a blah, but no."

"bleh?"

"blue blah bleh, tres bien... n'importe quoi!"

"white!"

"oh~ white~"

i do hope that by the end of this academic year, they'll remember that their national flag is of blue white and red.

not some weird combination of blue blah and laid.

we're anything but humans

we did "brown bear brown bear what do you see?" today.

so we went through all the vocabs and i wanted to see if they really knew what was going on.

as i flicked through pages and stopped, they needed to give me the name of the animal and tell me what colour it was.

"good! black sheep."

"no, it's sheep, not fish."

"good! it's a green frog."

some animals were easier than other ones.

"what did the green frog see?"

"hello duck."

"well, not quite. Yellow duck, Yellow, not hello."

"yellow duck yellow duck, what do you see?"

"brown ours."

"en anglais, stp!" (in english, plz)

long pause...

"repeat after me, BE-AH."

okay, animals went well, i stopped at the page of kids.

"what did the brown bear see?"

longer pause...

"comment on dit, les enfants en anglais?" (how do we say 'les enfants' in english?)

nothing still...

"okay, ca commence avec 'tch'..." (okay, it begins with 'tch')

"je sais je sais! chips!"(i know i know! chips!)

"chips! mais non, chips, c'est pour manger." (chips! but no, you EAT chips.)

"chair?!"

what chair?

"non! okay, chilllll..."

"chilli!"

i thought it must be lunch time soon, cos why else they kept coming up with food?

"okay, chilllddrrr."

"je sais je sais, chillds!" (i know i know, chillds!)

"euh, presque, mais non."(um, close enough, but no.)

"oh, c'est trop dur! on a pas pris!" (oh, that's too hard, we haven't done it before!)

"si, elle a deja dit!" - thanks mrs L (the class teacher who sits in during english). (yes, she has just told you!)

"repetez apres moi, chi-l-dr-en!" (repeat after me)

"children~"

"good, now children, you can put your things away and go have lunch now! bon appetit!"

love letters etc.

so i decided to be more sociable and sat in a geometry class before lunch today.

they were doing right angles and parallelograms stuff.

after they finished drawing, they lined up to show the class teacher their worksheets and she corrected them.

i, after have had helped out the kid who sat next to me, had nothing to do, so bored, i started reading a dictionary which sat right on the desk (logic!).

i thought it was weird that a girl kept smiling at me whenever i looked her direction.

it's not my first time to be with them in the same classroom.

and fyi, french people don't normally smile at strangers.

now that i'm no longer a stranger to them, they smile at me as often as we have eye contacts.

then i was wondering if i had something on my face.

couple of minutes later, she came to my desk and handed me a picture she drew!

on the top, it says "i love you."

"tu sais que veut dire 'i love you'?", i asked.

"oui, c'est a dire, je t'aime."

"awww, moi aussi. merci, c'est tres joli!"

and then, this "kate" girl ran to gimme a "present" after lunch.

(whenever i asked what their names were, bizarrely enough, they all introduced themselves to me by their "english names".

with my 6-y-o's, i didn't give them english names, though the other teachers think it helps them to understand the different sounds of the same letter.

i tend to think that french names are rather cool, they should just stick to their french names.)

and in this pocket, there's a note:

it reads: j'aime l'anglais avec toi. je trouve que c'est comme un reve de pouvoir apprendre l'anglais.

(i love doing english with you, i find it a dream to be able to learn english.)

this makes me smile from ear to ear.

when they're not screaming or talking non-stop during classes, they're just like little angels.