Help with a 6 year old.....

[tired]

Can anyone advise the best learning tools to help continue a 6 year olds English learning?

He is now enroled into a French school so obviously learning french, but I would like to keep up with his English reading and writing as much as possible, as he is already showing signs of losing the basic English that he had!

Any help would be gratefully recieved.

[TWINKLE]

This has been discussed on the forum a couple of times - read these threads they may be of help.

http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/742688/ShowPost.aspx

http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/714202/ShowPost.aspx

 

[Ergotherpeut1]

Our six year old does quite a lot on the CBBC and Cbeebies websites, a lot of the content is designed to learn whilst having fun.  We also go through her school homework with her in French and English - that is to say if it is on months of the year/days of the week. etc.  we do both languages written and spoken.  It also helps that we have four children and thus far only two are speaking French on a regular basis, although No 3 has recently started mornings at school.  When we get DVD's in France they have language options and depending on who is in charge at the time, they are sometimes in English, sometimes in French.   Often we allow our daughter to answer the phone and she switches between languages.  We do not really have to motivate her to keep up with the English but it helps to know that friends/cousins are coming for holidays or we will be going to them.  Most of our bedtime stories are in English (sometime the school library books, but it seems to take too long as she is alway correcting my French pronounciation), we also have a selection of the English 'start reading' books  We do encourage her to write (short) letters to her friends/family as a way of staying in touch, which also helps with her written English. 

Best wishes 

[Emma]

We moved to France just as my daughter finished reception in the UK.  I have continued to work through the Oxford Reading Tree books, with the characters Biff, Kipper and Chip, which eventually evolves into the Magic Key stories.  I have found these to be really good, lots of word repetition and short but entertaining stories which my daughter loves.  She is always keen to read them and we read one together each night at bedtime. There are word lists on the back of each book of words to be practised, these can be made into flash cards.

 

My son followed the same series of books and was eventually able to enjoy the magic key books reading alone.

 

I haven't found that my daughter isn't confused by reading in 2 different languages and in fact I feel that practising reading in either language seems to be of benefit all round.

 

You can buy the books on Amazon or there are loads available on ebay.

 

Hope this helps.

[Franglais2007]

Hi Emma

Have you had a look for any bilingual after school clubs? Our 5 year old goes to a French school too so he goes on a Wednesday to our activity centre Kidooland where he does Global Fun .. last week they did the  Egyptians! basically they bring the world to life using art theatre and music all in English! He's with a group of other bilinguals and is learning to use his english more.

If you're down near Antibes in the 06 I can give you the address..good luck!

[jenpet]

Hello Emma,

I was similarly concerned, although my son is only 5. Much as he enjoys stories, trying to write etc I wanted him to be able to read and write as well in English as in French, and to learn alongside what he was doing at school.  So we have started a small group who go to a great teacher who taught the same age group at a bilingual school in Paris, my son loves it and has become great friends with another little boy who goes too.

This is my problem.  Despite me trying to get parents nearby interested, no-one was really interested! Too busy/too far/child not interested etc....I think at this young age if children are keen to learn it should be encouraged! But my advice to you would be perhaps to try and find something similar, it has to be good fun, otherwise he will lose interest and it will become a battle.

Do let me know if you want to know anymore about it etc, and good luck!