dot dot dot

A re-post from the Seabury School French blog -- sometimes my life is made up of scanning, erasing and scrambling numbers for Dot-to-dots.

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By now, we all know that French is fun.

(Hopefully) your students come home each week with stories of the new games we play in class. Raise your hand if you've heard about "the candy game?" Or le jeu des bonbons?

Students may think the most memorable aspect of the ever-popular Jelly Belly taste-test game is the fact that they're eating Jelly Bellys in class -- but you can bet the next time Mme. O or Mlle. H says la fraise, it's the taste of that strawberry bonbon that the students are thinking of.

As Mme. O says, that's the difference between learning something, and picking it up or absorbing it.

On the surface a game is a game with French sprinkled in -- in reality, it is so much more than that.

Today Les Etoiles Super will have fun with a "Dot-to-dot." But there are a few things that need to be done before we can enjoy this simplest of number games.



First, the original Dot-to-dots have to be scanned to a computer.



Then each number is carefully erased.



The numbers (1 to 20) are scrambled and typed back in.



And the Dot-to-dots are finally ready.



We begin after careful instructions that this is a different kind of Dot-to-dot. You can not simply trace from 1 to 2 to 3 -- you must wait for Madame or Mademoiselle's instructions to trace from cinq to vingt to dix-huit, to onze.

The Dot-to-dotting is just as fun as before, but we've added constant repetition of les nombres en français.

It's the Dot-to-dot (and beautiful finished picture) that is consciously remembered -- but those numbers have a way of sticking in a brain, especially if they work their way in during something FUN!