1. Course Description: Upper Elementary French [“bleu”]
Kim Winblad: kwinblad@vineleaf.net 668.52.53
I taught French for fifteen years at Kalamazoo area private schools, for preschool
through eighth grade students. There was no published curriculum that followed my
philosophy of using no English, so I also developed a complete curriculum and created
all the materials with which to teach it. I was also blessed to be able to be the Christian
Education Director at my church for several years. This gave me an opportunity to be
trained in Sonja Stewart’s Children’s Worship program, which I will have adapted to
incorporate into my classes. I have now been teaching homeschoolers in various venues
for the past six years.
The fourth, fifth and sixth graders meet for 45 minutes. I teach foreign language
from the perspective of how a child learns his native language: counting, colors, body
parts, simple conversational forms (“what is your name?/my name is___”;), rhymes,
children’s stories, and Bible stories. As you can see, this is just the way your children
learned to speak English. I do not use English to “help” in class, since it is not necessary.
All ages follow a very general, seasonal thematic outline for the year. This older
group works very much like the lower group, only at an accelerated pace, with more
vocabulary. As the year progresses, I cross-reference categories to build grammar
concepts, so colors and numbers will be used to introduce adjectives, quantity, singular
and plural, and basic sentence structures. They will be doing short monologues,
“interviewing” each other, and doing more memory work than the younger groups.
There will also be ample opportunities to play games and do activities designed to
encourage them to express themselves and think in French as much as possible.
A take-home DVD is provided so that the students can watch it every day in order
to master the weekly vocabulary segments. This allows them to come to class having
mastered the vocabulary words so that we can use them in activities and games, and to
work on grammar and conversation using new vocabulary each week.
Upper Elementary [4th, 5th, and 6th grades] Syllabus
Sample Themes: school, apples, autumn, meals, family, harvest,
insects, Thanksgiving, winter, holiday fun, snow, Valentine’s, games,
shapes, senses, space, sports, Paris, Brussels, clothing,
transportation, community, spring, pets, house, dinosaurs, Michigan,
summer, Bible stories; Great Masters;
Skills: counting; colors; vocabulary acquisition; children’s stories,
rhymes, and songs; alphabet; basic French grammar structures;
‘Great Masters’ presentations; hands-on activities in many cross-
curricular areas; listening comprehension; pronunciation
development;
***$160.00 for the year*** [includes vocabulary DVD and all materials]
***Families with multiple children will not be expected to pay more than $580.***