Whickham Parochial Pre-school’s French Adventures with Kidslingo – a nursery owner’s perspective by Tanya Wood

November 7, 2019

Back in 2017, we built a new preschool for 3 and 4 year olds in the premises of a primary school in our local town in the North East of England. We have always been huge supporters of young children learning a language – in our previous preschool all the staff used their holiday Spanish to teach the children supported by YouTube clips. When we moved premises we discovered that the primary school, that many of our children would move on to, taught French. How would we cope? None of us could say much more that bonjour or merci!

Then we attended the Nursery World Show in London and met a lovely lady called Anna from Kidslingo who said she could help us. We were in luck as Kidslingo had a new person living very close to us who was just starting out with her franchise.

So that’s how we met Sarah – she came along and gave us a free taster session. That was it, we needed Sarah! She has been coming every Monday morning ever since and the children love it. Sarah uses fun games, parachute, singing, props and stories to help the children learn French in interactive ways.

The feedback from the children is always very positive, they sing their new songs and are always smiling during the classes. The parents tell us regularly that their children are impressing them with counting and sentences in French.

Even children with special educational needs and speech and language difficulties can join in, as Sarah is able to differentiate her sessions ensuring they are inclusive. One particular child, who chose not to speak very often and when he did could very often not be easily understood, amazed us with his understanding and pronunciation of the French vocabulary. We can only assume it was the new and interesting sounds he was learning that interested and stimulated him – of course the fun would’ve helped too. The sessions are Makaton friendly too!

At the end of the year our children put on a graduation performance. Some of our children dress up with French flags and all the children, even those who don’t attend the days when we have the French sessions, sang the Kidslingo bonjour song. Our audience was most impressed!

We are so happy we stopped and chatted with the Kidslingo people at Nursery World as the French sessions are a great asset to what we already do. The children love it, the parents are impressed and the staff have all built up their confidence in French too. The following year at Nursery World Show, we even sang the bonjour song for the Kidslingo staff, who were most impressed with us too.

Merci Kidslingo and Merci Sarah for the fun and interactive sessions and giving all the children a great head start into their school life. Our reception teacher is always impressed with the knowledge of her class that comes from us.

We look forward to all our future French sessions.