#markhamvillage

Leisurely afternoon walk in Markham Village #markhamvillage to the “Book Shop” and discovering a #gelato shop tucked away in an alley (at Main Street Markham) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQH16y0BdNCnxdsn2rUEGK3dwLTZjMjBUGyyFg0/?utm_medium=tumblr

Family night out at the Markham Music Festival w. The Team. . . . #benczikteamrealty #markhamvillage #musicfestival #summer2018 #familytime (at Markham Village, Ontario)

Thank you so much everyone! We truly enjoyed such adorable, well behaved, kind, polite, AMAZING campers! Much of the credit goes to your parenting skills and we can't thank you enough for coming to our presentation today, we hoped you enjoyed it as much as we did! A short video of all the performances: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99At2WkQjnE&feature=youtu.be   Au revoir pour maintenant!

Today we had a SUPER exciting library day!! We started off the morning by working in our work books and catching up on unfinished work. Our special rule of the day was, they can only go to the washroom or get a drink after repeating or requesting through their own memory "may I got to the washroom/get a drink" in French.   Then we went straight to practicing our songs! All campers started to learn a new song... SUPER Héroes!! They LOVE the song because there are lots of super hero power action moves! The grades 2/3 also continued to practice the song "T-Shirt" while the grade 1s went outside to practice Jours de la semaine, Tete et Epaules, and Frere Jacques. At this point, they have become professional French singers! While the grade 1s were outside, they also learned the names of sports in French. Some are very similar such as "golfe, gymnastique or volley-ball" but many are very different such as Swimming=Natation, Skating=Patinage, and Basketball=Ballon-Panier! Campers acted out all the sports while repeating the name. Once all campers were back indoors, a few of the grades 2/3 caught up in their work book, while others worked on conducting interviews. They were paired up and wrote a script to find out more about each other. They read their scripts to me and they were awesome! Grade 1s continued to work in their workbooks! Afterwards, all the campers went outside to play. Several of the campers played grounders, while others played soccer, and a few played with the Frisbees. After we returned to our program room, all campers had a lesson on animals! Our counselor would imitate the sounds of the animals and the campers would guess which animal it was, and would learn the French name for the animal! The most important animal we learned was.... THE PANDA! (We will find out why later!) Today was a big learning day for campers. After learning the animals, they learned the names of different school supplies such as gomme, crayon, papier, étudiant, etc. The campers were then split into two teams, team JAUNE and team VERT! While they were outside, a counselor and our volunteers hid a bunch of vocabulary words that we had just learned around the classroom, for a SCAVENGER HUNT! Campers explored the program room to find as many words as they could! Once they had found all their words, they had to label the appropriate object in the room. For example, if they found papier, they had to stick it onto a piece of paper. If they found papillon (butterfly), they had to stick the word onto our picture of a butterfly! The campers had a lot of fun and became very involved! After lunch, the grades 2/3s copied the song Super Heroes into their notebooks. Grade 1s practiced the song "Super Héroes" several more times.  Then we rehearsed the other songs for the big presentation tomorrow. The library staff invited us for a special treat visit from the Toronto Zoo staff and a magician from 2-3:30 giving the campers a chance to win four tickets to the zoo...sadly none of our campers won but, THEY HAD AN AMAZING TIME, asked loads of questions and not only learned about the pandas but also took pictures with him!  They learned about the panda skeleton, the foods the pandas eat and much more.  They were also amazed with the magic tricks by the magician!  We thought this was a well deserved break from all their hardwork! Please scroll down for pictures. We're so excited for tomorrow: 3 P's DAY: PRESENTATION, PYJAMA, PIZZA! Parents I hope you can come by 3:30 tomorrow! Au revoir, à  bien tôt!

Salut (Hi)! We had a fun filled day today!  Campers are really starting to get to know each other and are having plenty of fun learning more about the French language!       We started off the day by making cover pages for our "dossiers" (notebooks) so that we can write french notes in them throughout the day!  Once everyone arrived, we played a huge game of DIX with all the campers, which gave us a chance to practice counting 1 to 10 in French while also having a ton of fun!       After snack, we then split off into groups by grades, and practiced learning some songs that we are going to perform for you on Friday.  Right now the campers are still starting to learn the songs, but we think they are going to be presentation-ready by Friday!      The campers going into grades two and three got their creative juices flowing when they started writing stories in French in the dossiers that they made this morning.  From what they've written so far, we have a lot of potential bestselling French authors at our camp this week!  But we can't forget about the little ones!  The campers going into grade one had a chance to learn about the body parts in French, which they were able to grasp really quickly.  They are preparing a dance to practice the body parts for Friday, which will be very exciting, you don't want to miss it!    After working so hard during the day, we also went outside for break and played at the park, it was great to see the campers enjoying the fresh air.  Throughout the day we also read two books as a class, "L'arbre genereux" and "Chapeau rond rouge".  We had never seen campers being so attentive! It was quite a fun-packed day today, I am super excited to see all of our little Frenchies tomorrow! REMINDERS FRIDAY IS : Pizza Day, Presentation Day and Pyjama Day! We hope parents can come at 3:30 to watch our presentation of what the children learned!

Bonjour! Today our main focus was learning family members (soeur, frère, papa, maman, grand-maman, grand-papa, cousin, tante, oncle), learning how to write the date (Mercredi, le 30 juillet 2014), and solidifying our knowledge of colours! In the morning, the campers going into grades 2 and 3 played a game called Pamplemousse! In this game, you choose one number to replace with the word Pamplemousse. For example, if you choose number 4, whenever numbers 4, 14, 24, 34, 40, 41, 42 etc. land on a camper, they have to say pamplemousse instead of the number. This was a tricky game and took us a while to perfect! In the end, we went ALL THE WAY TO 100!! Meanwhile, the campers entering grade 1 were learning the names of different family members in French. The campers then drew a picture of their families and labeled them by their role in the family (soeur, papa etc). Once they had learned all the family members, all the campers came back together to complete an activity. Each camper got rectangular slips of paper and on each slip, they drew a picture of a family member and labeled it. Once all their slips of paper were complete, they compiled them together to make a family chain! After snack, we learned how to write the date. This was brand new information for the campers entering grade 1, but the campers entering grades 2 and 3 also needed a reminder of the order of the date in French. Every camper wrote the date in their notebook, as well as a model to follow every day. (Jour de la semaine), le (numéro) (mois de l'année) 2014. We then created colour wheels! Every camper got a circle and divided it into 8 parts. They drew a different colour in each part and labeled it rouge, bleu, vert, violet, etc. They then added streamers onto their colour wheels, and we taped them to the ceiling! The colour wheels looked awesome! After lunch, our mini-professeurs (grades 2 and 3) read to our younger campers in the library. It is awesome to see the mini-professeurs working with the grade 1s to help them learn more French! They are very caring and are awesome teachers, and the grades 1s are great listeners. They really enjoy the stories and look forward to this part of the day! Afterwards, we worked on our songs for our presentation on Friday!! The grades 2 and 3 are working on "Mon T-shirt" (a very tough song!) while the grade 1s are working on "Jours de la semaine, Tete et epaules, & Frere Jacques". The campers worked hard and we are positive that the presentations will be amazing! We also read two stories in French to the grade 1s: "Les chaussetes sentent la moufette" (Robert Munsch's Smelly Socks!) and "Tourbillon d'émotions" (So many emotions!). The campers were able to recognize a lot of the emotions based on the pictures and based on words that were similar to English (such as excité and excited). After our last snack of the day, some of our grades 2 and 3 worked on the stories that they started yesterday. They all incorporated "5 personnes, 5 lieus, & 5 choses", as we learned Monday (5 people, 5 places, 5 things). The grade 1s continued working in their work books. The work books are looking super good! The counselors wrote comments in each work book for encouragement and suggestions. We would like to remind parents to come in at 3:30 on Friday to watch our campers' presentations! Also, don't forget Friday is PIZZA DAY!! A demain tout le monde! Au revoir!

Bonjour! (Hi!) Today was only the first day of camp to welcome our little Frenchies but we already feel like we know them all! The day started with the simple creation of name tags so that we can know the campers more followed by a ball of yarn game in which campers were told to introduce themselves by saying "Bonjour  je m'appelle ___ " (Hi my name is) and something they liked to do and then toss the yarn to the next person so we made a big spider web.  We found out that apart from French, we have campers who love drawing and sports! We were also interested to find that many campers ranged in age from going to grade one to going to grade 2 or 3 and thought for enhanced learning, we would split the class up for many activities in terms of their ability  so we can spend time to effectively meet each of their needs.  Our counsellor Josée spent time with the older members of camp, (grade two and three) while Frouhi and Melanie spent time with the younger ones (going to first grade) The older campers came in with knowledge of counting, colours, days of the week in French so they dived right into the workbooks to fill in all the worksheets they knew from prior knowledge.  These worksheets included unscrambling days of the week, writing down what they liked to do in each month of the year, filling in numbers and spelling them etc.  The campers were so knowledgeable and loved working in their books, in fact they kept saying they loved homework! We were so proud.  As soon as they complete the basic sheets, we hope to delve in to harder subjects with the older ones for the rest of the week. On the otherside of the room, the younger campers just entering french immersion were taken in a slower approach and we had the campers line up and individually say the phrases "bonjour je m'appelle __. J'ai __ ans" (Hi, My name is ___ and I am ___ years old" .;  As each camper successfully completed each word they would go to the end of the line and the rest of the team would cheer them on!  They were great!We then moved on to learn the alphabet and made an alphabet train in french so that they could only move to the next"station" if they all correctly pronounced each portion of the alphabet. Both the older and younger campers played the "Ne dit pas dix" game (Don't say ten) among their groups where each person had to say either one, two or three numbers in sequential order in french but the person who ended up with ten would "lose a body part"-- they would hide their hands behind their backs etc.  Because younger campers finally learned the basics, they were able to start their workbooks. After being separated, we decided to regroup for story time and read the story "On partage tous" (We share everything) by Robert Munsch.  The campers enjoyed the book no matter the age! After returning from lunch, we had an activity where it was book-buddy system time! The older campers were assigned position as mini-Proffeseur (mini-teachers) in which the older campers were paired with younger campers and we took them to the French section of the library so that they would mutually choose books and the older campers would read and teach the younger campers what the books meant in French.  This gave a chance for peer-to-peer learning (counsellors stepped in only when the older campers could not figure something out) but we were so impressed with the team work and leadership and cooperation we saw! Before going outside, we wanted tot each the younger campers about colours.  We did this by rehearsing all the colours in French and then dumping markers to the middle of the circle so they would have to grab all colours that were called out.  Meanwhile, older campers were looking through books and making a list of "feminine and masculine" words in French. Finally we all went outside and played a game of "Poisson et Requin", "Chien et Chat" with the parachute which was basically dividing the group to be poisson (fish) or requin (sharks ) and they would run through the parachute when called without getting caught.  "Chien et chat" was (dog and cat) where the dog would have to find the cat amdist a shaky parachute.  To reinforce colours, we then had campers run through the parachute if the colour of their parachute was called. Returning in, the older campers got to work some more on their workbooks and writing all the feminine and masculine words down while we taught the days of theweek song to the younger campers. The day ended with one last story while parents picked the campers up! We enjoyed having your children and can't wait for the rest of the week! REMINDERS: FRIDAY IS : Pizza Day, Presentation Day and Pyjama Day! We hope parents can come at 3:30 to watch our presentation of what the children learned!

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