French for Kids - Favorite Songs

Throughout our French week, we worked on quite a few songs, "les chansons", and nursery rhymes.  This post is to share links to some of our favorites!

Link:  http://www.mamalisa.com/?p=22&t=ec&c=22

First up, an amazing compilation of songs and nursery rhymes including the French and English translations can be found here at Mama Lisa's World.  The ever popular "Frere Jaques" was definitely the easiest one for my four year old to pick up on.  We sing it in the car, in the bathtub, and everywhere else really.  Weeks later, he's still singing it!

There are so many songs on that website, and the best part is most of them include sheet music or links to MIDI files and MP3's so you can hear someone singing the song in French!

Our second favorite song during France week was "Alouette".  I have heard this song so many times before, but I never realized until that week what this song actually says!  The song is used to teach body parts, using parts on a bird, and actually refers to all the places you'll pluck feather off of the bird!!  I found this great video on YouTube that is a funky animated version of the song.  It reminds me of Angry Birds, and my son, a big fan of that game on my phone, absolutely loved watching this video and learning this song!

I'd point out the area of the body referred to when it was mentioned (pat my head for "tete", use my hand for a beak for "bec", make chicken wing arms for "les ailes", etc.).  The song "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" is also translated nicely in French and is a great tool for teaching parts of the body to youngsters.

I like this video for learning "les jours de la semaine", the days of the week, in French.  It has a nice melody, it repeats a few times for repetitions and once with only music giving you or your child the opportunity to say the words by themselves, and its a bright colorful video to watch as well.   

This is a cute and simple video for learning the number 1-10 in French.  I like the simplicity of this video and that it goes through the numbers forwards and backwards.  

This is another counting video, this time for number 1-20 in French.  I like this one because it includes the names of the numbers on some of the repetitions, and the animations are hilarious.  Perfect for keeping kids interested.  I don't get why worms with arms in Jamaica though!

I hope you enjoy these videos as much as we have!  YouTube has proven to be an excellent resource in my endeavor to teach French to our kids.  I have pinned a few more songs to my "en Francais" board over on Pinterest.  We still have several more I want to learn and teach the kids, and I'm always keeping my eye out for new ones to add to that list!