phonics in French

[Rose-Roget]

Hello all! I've been bouncing around a few MDC forums recently, I was referred to this forum from the France forum - I'm so glad you exist! I live in the US with my French husband and our bilingual ds. I don't know when I'll start teaching ds to read in French, but when the time comes, does anyone have suggestions for phonics books, toys, resources in French? Also, if anyone else out there has bilingual children, when did you start teaching them to read in the minority language - did you wait until they were established with reading in the majority language or did you teach them simultaneously?

[quantumleap]

Teach them simulateneously! If he's at a reding level, he's obviously got a good grasp on which words and sounds go with which language. Really, the phonics are not that different. The tricks are the accents (but this isn't really hard because if he speaks, he knows that certain words are said with different accents), and little things, like how "ent" endings are not really pronounced.
In terms of phonics resources, I'm no good to you. Sorry. I do know that my reading averse brother finally decided to give it a go when Asterix et Obelix appeared in his hands. If your son is super young, this might go over his head though! We also liked the Martine books. They're huge monsters, but divided into smaller parts. We thought they were "grown up", but I have clear memories of reading them to my sister when we were probably 3 and 5. Good french books are hard to find in North America. Even in french communities, I find. You'll find the quantity, but not the quality of books like Each Peach, Pear, Plum, or Brown Bear, etc. Can you enlist family in France to send you a few things? I'm not a huge fan of the French school system (but your partner may have an entirely different opinion!), but guaranteed they'll have phonics books coming out of their ears.

Good luck.

[Rose-Roget]

Thanks for the encouragement to teach them simultaneously. My son is still pretty young (3-1/2) and I'm just preparing for the coming years, as he's already got a good grasp on some of the early phonological awareness skills.

I'll TRY to enlist some help from relatives. They are good hearted people, and lately they've been doing better, but sometimes they aren't very discriminating in their choices of gifts. If I can be specific, we'll have a better chance of getting quality. We do have quite a collection of children's books, but I'm not seeing them as ones that will be easy to teach reading with.

Just out of curiosity, what is it about the French educational system that you don't like? My husband hasn't expressed opinions about it. I think France's and America's could each use a makeover in different ways...but that's another story...

[soso-lynn]

You should check out Canadian bookstores to get French things that might be more relevant for bilingual children (plus cheaper on shipping than getting them from France).

Here are a few places you might want to look into:

Renaud-Bray

http://www.marchedulivre.qc.ca/ This is a French comic books store

All the other ones I can think of do not have a website.

You could also try to get some textbooks from schools here.

http://www.grandduc.com/index.php

http://www.planete-enseignant.com/ed...s-primaire.asp This site has a long list of links for educational materials.

[quantumleap]

Originally Posted by Rose-Roget

Just out of curiosity, what is it about the French educational system that you don't like? My husband hasn't expressed opinions about it. I think France's and America's could each use a makeover in different ways...but that's another story...

It's a very, very structured system, lots of memorization, lots of do it just so or you lose points. They do learn a LOT, I'm just not a fan of such a regimented system.

Oh, the phonics books I remember from my early years in school were called "Bibliobile" (they came in a case shaped like an "automobile"). I remember them being boring though. I could also read long before I was "supposed" to, which may have had something to do with that.