… exclaimed one of our tutors at our recent meet up. We were assessing how this last module had gone and what successes there were and any changes we might need to make for the future.
Howard has been working with us for about two and a half years. Every week the children (or 'les puces’) in our after school French clubs, spend 15 minutes of their one hour lessons, singing and dancing to the songs.
You may not have actually had the thought "I want my child to sing a song in French" but there’s nothing sweeter than seeing a little child singing - and when it’s in another language they are guaranteed to melt our hearts!
Each module we concentrate on one of our songs, so the puces get a deeper understanding of it. Howard said that he could see the meaning dawning on the puces’ faces as they started to understand a song that they had been singing for so long!
This is a fantastic example of the Les Puces method in action! It’s how we learn to speak when we are babies - by mimicking what we hear before we know for sure what it means. This way, your accent is true as you have been using your ears to copy a sound before you start to understand the meaning and then the writing of that word.
We have three albums of songs, which you can hear on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music etc. There is no way we can bombard the puces with the translations all at once - when we sing and dance in a class we are there to have fun and enjoy expending a bit of energy! It’s not study time, but at the same time, those important sounds are going in. They are there waiting for the pieces of the puzzle to start to fit together, like in Howard’s class where the children started to understand more about the song and that lightbulb moment so obviously happened.
Next module they will go more in depth into another song - and slowly but surely they gain in confidence and the puzzle of a new language starts to fall into place for them!
The Les Puces method can be followed from three years upwards. It's aimed at primary school age children (up to 11) to prepare children to enter secondary school with a positive attitude towards language learning. You can take a French subscription box where you receive a new module every other month; have French Zoom lessons with a private tutor; or have a Les Puces French after school club at your school. Get in touch at bonjour@lespuces.co.uk if you would like to know more.