chapeau and carnival time

It's half term very soon for us but some of our schools are getting ready for their carnival celebrations when they return after their holiday . We have always loved the French story book " Chapeau" and read it with children in French, German and Spanish - we had to add subtitles on card of course!

It's all about who you could be if you had a specific hat! Makes a splendid opportunity to try out hats with the class and decide who we want to be. A famous person? A type of person? Give a person a personality and a personal identity?

In French share this on-line 

si j'avais un chapeau comme ca

 turn the page book from the children of l'ecole Leo de la Grange in Saintes France .Will inspire you to create your own I am sure!

Then take the fancy dress theme and create a class hat on the flip chart .Revisit some basic language you have practised . Ask a child to pick a colour of crayon to draw the outline of the hate. Ask other children to draw shapes on the hat . Ask children to decide the colour of the shape. Add a sequence of numbers  and ask the children to decide which numbers. Ask a child think of an animal to draw on the hat and add an animal picture or design. What colour do the children want the animal to be.

Why not let the children take over and ask the questions !

A theme of "Carnival and fancy dress" seems as good a moment as any to listen to a silly rhyme in the target language about hats .Here it is in French with a silly voice on You Tube. It's basically the French version of "my hat it has three corners ".....

And here it is in German...

We will be making lift the flap books with our hats and professions , practising this rhyme "mon chapeau a quatre bosses..." / "mein Hut der hat drei Ecken",missing out key words and speeding up each time we sing it!

Here are some photos I took in France of several fantastic hat shops which always lead to discussion of which hats we might like to buy and wear and what the tools are in the shop window that you would have used in times gone by to make a hat! Hope you find these useful.