The Top Ten Questions That French Kids Ask…

Tags

children, English, France, French, funny, Humor, Humour, kids, Language, Learning, Teaching

I teach French kids English. I try to do it in a way that’s fun, but educational. I try to immerse the kids in the culture of England, to transport them there, for however brief a period of time it may be. I show them films that feature lots of intrinsically English things, I play games with them that feature lots of English words, I play songs to them with English lyrics; all in the hope that some words might, just might, slip in and stay there.

I also encourage them to ask questions; where in England am I from? What’s it like over there? What is the weather like? Do we eat similar foods? What are the schools like over there? What do I think of the current situation vis-a-vis the ongoing problems facing the country following Brexit? etc. etc.

I also encourage them to ask questions regarding the language and how to ask questions, directions, what the days of the week are, general conversational matters and so on and so forth.

With that in mind, here are – in no particular order – the top ten questions I get asked:

1. ‘How do you say ‘Bottom’ in English?’
2. ‘How do you say ‘Fart’ in English?’
3. ‘How do you say ‘*INSERT SLANG TERM FOR A PENIS HERE*’ in English?’
4. ‘How do you say ‘Poo’ in English?’
5. ‘How do you say ‘Boobs’ in English?’
6. ‘How do you say ‘Burp’ in English?’
7. ‘How do you say ‘You smell’ in English?’ (this one made me sniff my own armpits)
8. ‘How do you say ‘*INSERT SLANG TERM FOR A VAGINA HERE*’ in English?’
9. ‘How do you say ‘*INSERT ANOTHER PUPIL’S NAME* smells’ in English?’
10. ‘How do you say ‘I don’t want a bath’ in English?’

Well, that’s the problem when you work with kids between the ages of seven and eleven – you might have lofty ambitions about what you want to achieve, but they’ll bring you back down to earth very, very quickly.

Popo Cops…

Tags

Cereal, Childhood, children, French, funny, growing up, Humor, kids, Speech

This really is a blog post about something and nothing. More of a gentle, mental nudge for me to remember something when I’m older.

But it’s one of those things that I don’t want to forget as I find it very, very sweet and endearing.

My daughter and I have gotten a little bit hooked on Kellogg’s Coco Pops. It happened quite by accident. We were out of our usual cereal for a while and, as the kids and I eat the same one, I decided to try an old favourite that was more readily available here in France: the aforementioned Coco Pops.

However my daughter being the gourmand that she is, she immediately wanted to try them (she’ll try absolutely anything that one).

She loved them of course.

However as she is now pretty much French she seems to struggle with the name, instead of referring to them correctly, she instead calls them ‘Popo Cops’. I love this. Her mum tried correcting her but I asked her not to as I find it so cute. A little bit of a throwback to years gone by, when they were toddlers and were trying to wrap their tongues around new words and strange, cute distortions would come out instead.

I would try her on Golden Grahams next and see what she referred to them as. Except she’s already tried them.

She refers to them as ‘cardboard‘.

Honey, We Cloned Ourselves…

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children, Family, funny, Humor, Humour, Life, Relationships, stay-at-home Dad

Any excuse to feature a photograph of Stormtroopers

The missus has been working away a lot recently, last week in Birmingham in the UK and this week in Cannes in France. Birmingham to Cannes – that’s roughly the equivalent of one week in a Thailand prison vs one week in a…well, one week in Cannes.

This working away malarkey has led to me being on my own-some with the kids. Or should I say ‘kid’. You see at the moment my daughter is going through a somewhat annoying phase where she prefers the company of females. This is despite me raising her for the last six years. Therefore, to avoid unnecessary upset (for both her and myself), when my partner works away she stays with her grandma – or ‘mamie’, as they prefer to be called in France.

If I’m honest I really can’t complain too much, after all as anyone reading this who is a parent will know – or anyone with half a brain cell for that matter – one kid is much easier than two. I do still miss the kisses and cuddles at bedtime though, I’m not a completely cold-hearted monster.

So I’ve have had  lot more time recently to spend just with my son, and this has led me to reflect on how similar we are to each other. It’s something that’s been pretty obvious for the last few years – or maybe since ‘day one’ if I really think about it – but these last few days have really hammered it home.

He loves reading, he loves having a laugh, he loves video games, he loves to draw, he loves films, he daydreams (a lot) he’s annoying, he whines (a lot) , he’s lazy (very) and sometimes I suspect he wouldn’t be able to find his glasses if they were sat right on the end of his nose. He’s also got a very high-pitched voice that can cut through any other conversation with all the effortless precision of a dentist’s drill.

Yup. He is me.

Obviously not all those characteristics still hold true for me. I’m nowhere near as lazy as I was when I was younger, but this is something that we often lose as we get older. Well, some of us anyway (I’m specifically thinking of my father here, who wouldn’t get out of bed even if his house was on fire, and whose catchphrase was ‘No’, usually in response to the question ‘Can you help me with *insert generic favour here*’ but more often in response to the question ‘Are you physically active?’.)

He even sits to read the same way that I do – curled up in a corner, one legged crossed over the other, completely lost in a far-away world. We both enter creative ‘fugues’ as well now and again – him much more often than me. This is where he becomes obsessed with creating some new thing, drawing some new creature or painting some new portrait. He will not be distracted from his goal until he is spent/it is finished (whichever comes first).

This, obviously, leads us to my daughter. Who is a perfect clone of her mother.

Organised. Strong-minded. Laid back. Friendly. Easy going. Mature.

Stubborn.

As.

Hell.

Yes, unfortunately with this one I think a little bit of me slipped in during the ‘cloning procedure’.

Apart from that though, she is just a mirror image. 2/5 scale size mini-mum, if you like. This also means that she has a tendency to mother her older sibling, something that he used to find annoying, but which he is relying on and appreciating more and more (see: lazy.) Needs his shoes? His sister brings them. Needs more tomato ketchup on his chips? It’s already in her hands. His glasses are dirty? She’s cleaning them. Getting picked on by a bigger kid? She’ll beat them up for him (this last one is a joke, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be true one day.)

Yes, we’ve cloned ourselves quite effectively, and can see ourselves in our kids each day. More and more as they get older.

He has blonde hair though.

Just like our old milkman did back in England.

I’m just saying….

We Would Have Gotten Away With It Too, If It Wasn’t For You Pesky kids…

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children, games, Humor, Humour, kids, Life, Parenting, Relationships

 

 

What would we have gotten away with? A pleasant Christmas break,  a pleasant half-term holiday, an enjoyable trip to the swimming pool, an incident-free trip to the park, a shout-free bath time routine, ten seconds of peace, the ability to blink without something going wrong…

Yes, our children are at that wonderful age where they are a complete nightmare.

When they are together.

They are like some kind of horrendous combining Transformer (a Decepticon, to be clear). Mildly threatening when on their own, and a menace to society when they join to create the fearsome Maxi-Whine, or Moanzee – or maybe Greyhair-Makor. I don’t know, I’m not fixed on a name for the monstrosity they become when they ‘play’ together yet.

Play. Ha. Ha ha ha. Sigh.

Scream.

I remember back in the good old days (last year) when we could leave them together and the worst that could happen would perhaps be something got knocked over, or the TV would be turned off, or they would build a fort. Now everything is violence and pain.

I suppose it comes with the increase in body mass = the bigger the kid, the bigger the problem.

And it’s never their fault, always the fault of the other one.

So when you reenter the room you will get some cock-and-bull story from my daughter about how no, it was actually her brother who took off his own glasses and snapped the arm off on one side. Or it was actually my daughter that punched and then kicked herself in the head.

I’m exaggerating a bit, but you get what I mean.

Individually, as a rule, they are quite easy going and manageable. But together, these days, you can mentally set a clock in your head from the time you exit the room to the time it takes them to start fighting/break something/open a door/activate a nuclear weapon silo.

Sometimes I don’t even get out of the room before mayhem is ensuing.

This means that, at the moment, all holidays are a constant battle of maintaining order via separation, and the constant search for newer, better, and pain-free options of how to regain/maintain control. Oh and by pain-free, I mean for us, not them – the only damage they receive is from each other. Can’t say the same for us – especially if we get caught in the midst of the chaos.

I often used to see parents in the park during the day smelling of alcohol – grandparents too – and I mentally despaired that someone could be in that state at such an hour.

I don’t despair so much these days. I empathise. But don’t worry, I won’t be reaching for any alcohol.

Yet.

Because it’s just a phase, isn’t it? That’s what I keep telling myself. It’s just a phase.

Isn’t it?

The Honesty Of Kids…

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children, English, French, fun, funny, Humor, kids, languages, school, Teaching

 

Teaching English today.

Little girl looks at me quizzically.

‘You talk English?’ she says, sat in my English class, blinking her eyes in confusion.

‘Yes, because I am English’ I reply.

‘But you talk French too’ she continues (blink, blink).

‘Yes, but I speak better English than I do French’ I counter.

(Blink, blink) ‘But you speak French well’ she says, making my day.

‘Thanks, I try my best’ I reply, feeling quite pleased with myself.

‘But not too well’ she adds (blink, blink).

I don’t think there’s anything quite as honest as a 7 year-old child.

Doing Your Bit To Help Out With The Local School 2. The Museum Visit…

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children, education, Farming, France, French, History, Humor, Humour, kids, Learning, Museums, school

 

I get asked to help the school chaperone the kids on a visit to the museum in a local town. ‘This will be a doddle’ I think ‘Just walking around with the teacher making sure we don’t lose anyone’. I am of course wrong in thinking this.

The day of the visit arrives. It is beautiful, it is sunny.

Let’s all go inside a stuffy building full of agricultural tools then. So we do.

There are another couple of parents there. ‘Oh good’ I think ‘Safety in numbers and all that’. The other parents start taking the kids off in groups. I realise that the teacher is dividing the kids up into groups of seven and eight. The implications of this are hammered home as I see eight children – my son amongst them – being herded my way.

‘Oh well’ I think ‘It won’t be that hard will it? walking round an old museum full of tools’. The teacher then starts giving out quiz sheets to myself and each child.

I look at the sheet. It is full of strange words – which is nothing new for me as all words at the moment are a bit strange (it is French after all) but these are really strange –  as well as room numbers that correspond to the confusing words.

We head off into the first room. There are tools here that I have never seen before, and whose names I do not know in English. Apparently I am supposed to search in this room for the correct implement as listed by its bizarre name on the quiz sheet, and then take one of the letters from that name, and then do this in every room till we have a full set of letters which we will then have to rearrange to form the name of something else.

‘This is going to be a long morning’ I think to myself.

Coupled with this headache-inducing quiz is the fact that children – funnily enough – do not seem all that interested in looking at 200-year-old farming tools, and so have started acting up.

Have you ever shouted at a child in a museum? How about eight children? I have. I would prefer not to have to do it again. I would have preferred to not have had to do it 36 times, but that’s agricultural museums for you – they bring out the worst in kids.

Realising that this quiz is a non-starter for me and my limited grasp of ancient-agricultural-implements-French, I corner the teacher. ‘I don’t get this’ I tell her ‘I’ve never seen these things in England, let alone France – how do you win this game?’. Evidently you win this game by cheating, because she whispers the answer in my ear.

Then she looks at the expression on my face and writes it down on a piece of paper and hands it to me.

The seven kids (one of them has been removed for constantly disrupting the group, not my son by the way, he’s still stuck to me like glue) and I continue on our way, now mysteriously being able to identify each clue in each room with alarming rapidity.

We do it so quickly that we arrive in the reception room on the ground floor of the museum, where we are met by another parent and her seven wards (‘Why did I get eight?’ I think to myself ‘Teacher mustn’t like me’ I answer myself, pondering if this is the first sign of madness). She looks at me, resignation written large on her face, and then pulls out the timetable. We have finished the quiz with plenty of time to spare. In fact looking at the timetable it appears that we have another hour to wait before we have anything else to do.

I look at the 14 kids milling around a room full of glass cases with farming books inside them, thinking this is going to be a long hour. I look at the other parent, inquiring as to how she got down here so quickly. She pulls out a piece of paper, the teacher’s scrawled answer unmistakable.  ‘Oh well’ I think to myself ‘At least I’m not the only one who isn’t au fait with ancient French agricultural tools’.

World Cup Mania Starts At A Young Age…

Tags

children, Football, France, French, funny, Humour, Language, Teaching, World Cup

 

I teach English to the French kids at my local school on Thursdays.

 

After they’d finished one of their exercises today (colouring the English days of the week on the petals of a flower in the corresponding English colours) they asked me what to do with the centre. I told them they could do what they wanted with it, get creative.

 

As you can see – and as they told me when I asked – some of them are really getting into the World Cup.

 

I found the little heart particularly endearing.

Team Cucumber VS Team Cheese

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Cheese, children, Cucumber, Family, food, funny, Humor, kids, Relationships, stay-at-home Dad

Aside from the cucumbers this has absolutely nothing to do with this post.

 

‘Bleuuuuuurgh’ I look at the frowning face opposite me. ‘Oooooh that’s disgusting, eurghh!’ the frowning face’s eyes are now desperately looking for something to take the taste of this ‘disgusting’ thing away from the frowning face’s mouth.

The frowning face belongs to my partner, she’s sat opposite me, next to my daughter, at the dinner table. The cause of her frown? She’s just dipped her bread in the delicious sauce that was on my daughter’s plate, accompanying her meal. A delicious sauce that she herself cooked. So why the long face? Well that’s down to the addition of cucumbers to my daughter’s plate, their flavour has infiltrated the delicious sauce* and this has caused her revulsion.

You see we now live in a house divided. One which hopefully will stand. On the one side we have team cheese – my partner and my son. On the other side sit us, team cucumber, comprised of my daughter and I.

I’ve been waiting for an ally to join my side, in my love of cucumbers, for many years. I think my daughter’s love of cucumbers may even go beyond mine.

My partner also hates bananas.

My daughter loves bananas.

I can take or leave bananas.

That’s why this blog is called ‘Team Cucumber VS Team Cheese’ and not ‘Team Bananas VS Team Apples’.

My son is similarly repulsed by cucumbers, but I’m sure I can persuade him one day to try them. Maybe when he’s 26, and drunk.

Very specific about his food is my son – it has to fall into one of four categories:Bread

     1. Bread

     2. Ham

     3. Potatoes

     4. Cheese

Anything else and he is simply not interested.

So we have divided up into our two camps, and even have special call signs. They are very inventive. My team is called ‘Team Cucumber’ and eats cucumbers, and their team is called ‘Team Cheese’ and eats cheese.

The problem for them is that I also eat cheese.

They don’t like this.

They think that because of my sick love of cucumbers I should be banned from eating cheese.

I laugh in the face of their rules.

HA! I say to them as I eat a Babybel.

You should see what I’m going to do next – I’m going to make a cheese and cucumber sandwich. I think my daughter might try a bit, but knowing her she’ll remove the cheese and just eat the cucumber.

Then I will leave the cheese out for my partner, she will see it, pop it in her mouth and then: ‘Bleuuuuuurgh’ I will once again see the frowning face. ‘Oooooh that’s disgusting, eurghh!’…..

Team cucumber don’t mind stooping to dirty tricks you see, mwa ha ha ha!

 

 

*I have to keep saying that the sauce was delicious because she reads these things and so I’ve got to watch my back or there will be no more delicious, delicious sauces

Being Interrogated By The French…

Tags

children, France, French, funny, Humor, Language, Learning, stay-at-home Dad

I’m struggling to keep up with my kids in the French-language stakes. It’s simple really – their brains are young, mine is old. So while they are picking it up easily, I’m trying everything I can to ram it home. It’s going in. But It’s a slow process.

Those eight hours a day they spend at French school is really giving them an edge too.

So in an effort to boost my vocabulary, and possibly make some new French friends, last night I decided to head along to the local English speaking club – a group set up for French people who want to learn, or practise, speaking English.

I was met by 6 friendly French people, who all seemed very pleased that they had an authentic Englishman living in their village. They were all retirees, with the exception of the town Chemist. We decided – as me is already quite not bad at English talking – that I would speak French to them, and they would speak English to me.

‘But you must correct us!’ they told me ‘And we will correct you!’.

As it was my first time meeting them I didn’t want to ruffle their feathers, so kept any correcting of their speech to a minimum. They, however, had no qualms whatsoever about correcting mine.

This put my French to the test as, for the next one hour and 45 minutes they bombarded me with questions. It would have been shorter, but the amount of pauses I had to make in my responses, as I incorporated their corrections, dragged it out. They even corrected me when I told them that my 4-year-old daughter is already correcting my French – because I said the word ‘correct’ incorrectly.

I pointed out to them that this was like some kind of interview. They agreed with me but then corrected me and said no, it was more like an interrogation.

There were many funny little exchanges throughout the evening, as we discussed everything from Ed Sheeran’s singing, and his engagement, to how to make a Yorkshire Pudding, and why they were created in the first place.

My favourite part of the evening was when they were discussing their children. Some of them were clearly put out that they didn’t see their offspring often enough. The chemist piped up at this point, saying that her parents see her at least once a month. ‘Well they have to’ she said ‘I give them all their pills’.

Now that my headache has subsided I’m already looking forward to next Monday’s session.

What It’s Like: Watching A Film With My Four-Year-Old Daughter…

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children, cinema, entertainment, Family, film, fun, funny, Humor, kids, Parenting, Relationships, stay-at-home Dad

The following is an example of my daughter’s dialogue, spoken over the first ten minutes of pretty much any film that you could think of, that is suitable for children aged four. It doesn’t matter what genre it is, it will always follow the same pattern…

‘What’s that?’

‘Why are they doing that?’

‘Is he the baddy?’

‘Why is he the baddy?’

‘Is he the baddy?’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Where has she gone?’

‘Can I have some chocolate?’

‘I have not already had some’

‘No’

‘No’

‘No’

‘The baddy is a man?’

‘Why is the baddy a man?’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Why is he green?’

‘Are they the goodies?’

‘Why did he break that?’

‘Is it because he is bad?’

‘Is it?’

‘Can I have some more chocolate?’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not?’

‘Pleasssse????’

‘Can I have some more chocolate?’

‘Where are they?’

‘What is that?’

‘Does the baddy want that?

‘Is he the baddy?’

‘I want a cuddle’

‘Are they the goodies?’

‘What is that?’

‘Is that a weapon?’

‘Why did it do that?’

‘What’s a bomb?’

‘Does the baddy want that?’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Can I have some chocolate?’

‘Why not?’

‘They are the goodies aren’t they?’

‘They are strong aren’t they?’

‘Daddy you smell bad’

‘And you need a shave’

‘Can I have some chocolate?’