French for Kids - Colors and Quiche

For day two of Introduction to France week, we're delving into art and French cuisine.  After talking about the Parisian landmarks the day before, we spent a little more time on day two discussing the Louvre.  I once again hit Google for some great pictures of the famous building and some quick facts.  Did you know the Louvre is the most visited art museum in the world? (Hopefully I can be counted among those visitors one day!)

Next, I wanted to expand our French vocabulary to include colors.  I've hunted around for some French flashcards.  Everyone seems to carry Spanish ones, but French is incredibly hard to find.  And when I've found them, they just weren't at a price I was willing to pay.  So I decided to make my own.  I pulled out a few of my sons crayons and some blank note cards and got to work.  They're simple but they work just fine!

I'm contemplating making another set with only the French translation on there, but for now I also want my son to get used to recognizing the English words for these colors so I included both.  Practice these a few times, repeat often, and they'll have them down before you know it!

After we'd discussed the art museum and our colors, we had to put them to good use.  I thought about letting the kids paint, but since I had just cleaned up and organized the arts and crafts supplies, I decided to put a bunch of scrap construction paper to use instead.  I found some helpful videos that I could use to explain impressionist art very basically to kids.  This video is a quick background on Impressionism and Claude Monet:  http://www.ehow.com/video_12221608_make-impressionist-art.html.  I also found this great tutorial for teaching impressionist art using torn paper:  http://www.ehow.com/video_12222796_create-torn-paper-impressionist-art.html. 

Then came the really fun part.  The kids took the scraps of construction paper and torn them into a bunch of small pieces.  While we were doing this, I kept repeating the names of the colors in French for the color of construction paper they were using.

Once again, this activity was so fun and easy that my 2 year old could join in!  I asked my son to create a picture of flowers.  That was the only instruction I gave him besides "glue the pieces onto your paper".  And here's what he came up with!  He explained the juane (yellow) is for the yellow grass we have right now, and the blue near it is water that makes it turn green.  There are three flowers (he says they're roses!), and the long orange strips are tunnels and bridges for cars.  The blue at the top is of course the sky, and he mentioned that the green in the sky was just strange! 

I love it!  So it's now hanging in our kitchen as well.  French week turned out to be a huge hit, and this was only day two!!  

Quiche!

For lunch we made quiche which is awesome!  Way back in high school, one of my favorite things about taking French class was the French club breakfasts.  I think I've been making quiches ever since.  They're are simple, very easy to customize with whatever you have on hand, and so delicious!  

Our quiche was a chicken and broccoli quiche (with some zucchini mixed in too, hey use what you've got on hand right?).  I sort of followed this recipe:  http://www.genaw.com/lowcarb/broccoli_quiche.html from one of my favorite low carb websites.  Yes it's crustless, but I still call it quiche.  We can still learn about French culture without the extra carbs!

I diced the onion with about half of a zucchini and sauteed with garlic for a few minutes, until the onion and zucchini just start to become tender.  Then I added about a cup of leftover shredded chicken and the cooked broccoli.  I mixed half of the cheese into this mix and poured it into the pie plate.  Then mix the cream (I used whole milk and it turned out just fine), eggs and seasonings and pour evenly over the chicken and vegetables.  Top with the remaining cheese!   

I pulled it out of the oven after 35 minutes and let it rest for about 10 minutes.  It was perfectly set and absolutely yummy!

In case you missed the first day, here's the link to our Introduction to France week activites.  And don't forget to check out the day three activities at Weather and Counting in French.