Içi on parle Français

Thanks to my friend Katherine, we found a French language program we really like. I was amazed. Both my budding mathematician and my humanities-major-to-be are having a blast. In fact, to my surprise, I would have to give a slight edge to the mathematician, in terms of catching on quickly and turning it into actual speech. (The humanities major has a better accent, though.) I guess his interest in runes and coding should have tipped me off.

Happily, they find humor in the most elementary kind of sentences. One particular favorite of theirs is "The egg is on the bowl." This is accompanied by a picture of a bowl turned upside down, with a bowl balanced on top, and it has them rolling on the floor every time. They like to make up their own, too, like "The airplane is on the table." So when we're listening to the French CD, I often have to admonish them to stop giggling so much -- not the kind of discipline I was concerned about. I was anticipating having to rope them in and sit them down, but in fact, they are willing participants in our little language sessions.

The thing is, they like making regular sentences, too, and at dinner will frequently observe "The boy is eating bread," or "The mother is eating meat." All this after a week of lessons. I found a bunch of French language CDs on Netflix that are now topping my queue, and am shopping around for some easy French reading. At this rate, we'll be needing a field trip to Paris soon.