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La voix des parents de Colombie-Britannique

by Annie Bourret, Professional Linguist and Children’s Author

Promoting French on a Daily

Basis

The 4 Rs in Action — Healthy Eating

This fourth and final article
ea on the integration of the 4 Rs

into everyday life deals with
healthy eating. Because of fhe im-
portant place that food has in our
lives, nutrition fits in very well with the
four key concepts of the 4 Rs ap-
proach (routine, rejoicing, repetition
and rewarding).

With the suggestions below, you
can feed your young child’s body
and mind in French, both aft the
same time! In this way, your chil-
dren can quife naturally enrich their
vocabulary while they learn about
socio-cultural aspects of eating,
such as conversation, their culture’s
typical dishes, and good fable man-
ners. From the age of two, you can
have them participate in actual
food shopping, and in planning and
preparing meals, either “for real” or
just pretending.

To inspire you, here are four of
the ten free activities in the “Manger
santé” component of fhe GRANDIR
resource. Visit www.fpfcb.bc.ca/

grandir > Fiches a’ activité.

“Godtorama” card (from one to
five years old) - This celebration
where we taste food allows you
to talk about the colours, shapes,
textures, and sounds that each
type of food makes in your mouth
(crounche? sloup?), as well as its
taste. With friends, talk about the
type of food that each person
loves the most.

“Pizza amusante” card (from

two to five years old) - A theme
with unlimited possibilities! Play a
game about delivering a pizza
from A to Z (choose the toppings
before calling, open the door for
the delivery, pay, enjoy the pizza,
and recycle the box). There are
many types of pizza: Halloween,
Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or
even fruit with a chocolate pizza
pie crust. Try new crusts (pita,
bread, bagel, English muffin, etc.)
and compare them from one ~
time to another.

“Cing sens - Allons faire Il'épicerie”
card (from two fo five years old) -
Many suggestions for pretending, for
actually going, and even for compo-
sing a story that talks about going to
the grocery store. Many suggestions to
enrich vocabulary (colour, taste, tex-
ture, etc.).

“A quoi ca sert?” card (from three to
five years old) — An excellent “playing
and talking together’ type of activity
that works vocabulary as well as liste-
ning and cognition. Let me explain:
you could play to complete sentences
such as: “Je mange mes céréales
avec...”. If your child responds “une
fourchette”, then try fo eat cereal in
this way to see what will happen! If
your child gives the correct answer,
offer praise.

‘sonteo

es
»

The 4 Rs and Healthy Eating

ROUTINE > Take advantage of hand-washing! To make sure
that hand-washing lasts the necessary 20 seconds, sing a litle
song (about the alphabet, for example) or describe all the
steps in French, from turning on the tap to drying your hands.
Let your children choose their placemat at each meal.

REPETITION > Make sure that they participate often with the gro-
cery list. At the supermarket, give them tasks (for example, let
them carefully choose some fruit and put it in a plastic bag
from their seat in the shopping cart, carefully counting if with
you, orlet them give you at least one type of food at the check-

out, like all the bread or all the cereal boxes).

REJOICING > Do fun activities. Transform snacks into picnics in

the living room, with their stuffed animals or friends as guests.
Play going fo the restaurant (a role play) with actual acces-
sories (fable articles, a pad of paper and pencil, etc.) or
made-up ones (menus, placemats, etc.). You can pretend to
prepare meals, cakes, or cookies for imaginary guests.

REWARDING > The situations allowing you to give your child a
feeling of success will be everywhere, whether it's choosing
the correct number of apples at the grocery store or putting
together a nice placemat, not to mention the potential of
games where you pretend to prepare food, serve it, and so on.