Summer celebration messages based upon Bloemenwinkel tradition
- French poem writing at the seaside,
- creating a sandcastle building rhyme,
- designing fantastical sandcastles,
- seashell sounds and sand treasure hunts
- Pirates ahoy!,
- French,fishy and fun game,songs and rhymes
The tradition I love from the article about Belgian seaside is "Bloemenwinkel "
You can read about the tradition in the article linked to the picture to above in the blog article I referred to at the top of this blog.I love the fact that children pay for the flowers with shells and also that these are made from tissue paper or crepe paper and are sold on the beach to the children who visit.
I think we can make a wonderful final lesson for Year 3 and Year 4 just before Summer with this idea.
We will firstly go shell counting.
Simply using shell shaped card templates with numbers on the reverse side and in lots of different colours we will hunt numbers.
Use eight different card colours and divide the cards into groups of eight (eight different colours and random ordered numbers written on the reverse side)
We need as many shell cards and numbers as there are children in the class and we need to use eight different colours of card each time.
We will play the game in groups of eight cards at a time in a random order or selection.
Can the children guess the shell number and if they can they win the shell and if they can't the shell is put back on the board.The children need to say the colour of the shell that they want the teacher to turn over and guess the number.
Bloemenwinkel
Explain the Belgian seaside tradition to the children and share the pictures from the blog article with the children
Locate the seaside resorts on the Belgian coast.Did the children realise that there was so much seaside in Belgium?Do they know where Belgium is and what languages are spoken there?
Can the children now help you to create your own Bloemenwinkel (flower corner shop)?
Creating the Bloemen
My "bloemen" will be like fortune cookies.There will be one each for every child with a celebration written message chosen and written by another classmate on the flower head,which is made of a rolled coloured paper strip.
Each child needs a strip of coloured paper and a straw and some selotape.
Each child selects a strip of coloured card that is wide enough to write on and long enough to roll ,so it will fit on one end of a straw- just like miniature versions of the flowers you can see in the picture.
Provide the children with a range of phrases they can select from to write on their strips of coloured card in the target language.
For example:
Make sure your class can understand the phrases.You could practise them as "celebration sayings" with cheers and happy voices - celebrating the fact it's nearly the holidays
Here are some Bloemenwinkel made by my colleague Joanne Hornby with her Year 4 class.They went outside and put them in a flower bed and drew lots to pick a flower from the bloemenwinkel.Joanne says that the children loved the whole activity and the fact they had something to take home at the end of the year
Here are the phrases in French:
- Now they need to roll the coloured card strips and attach one end to one end of straw.
- Collect in the flowers and attach one of the shell cards with the number showing to the base of each flower.
- Now hand round a bag which has numbered shell cards inside .
- Each child takes a shell and must say the number and then find the flower with that numbered shell card attached to it .This is his/her flower and s/he can unravel the coloured paper strip and see what his/her celebration saying written message is.