Mommy Camp Around the World: France

Our trip to France was full of art projects and fun! We learned about three major French artists, ate a little French fare, attempted a few ballet moves and had fun with our dramatic play bakery!

As with each week of MC Around the World, first we had to "travel" to our focus country. Last week we ended our travels in Rome, Italy so, we looked at the map and discussed how we would travel from Rome to Paris. We decided to fly and then looked at the weather in Paris to make sure we had the right clothes. Then we went through airport security and boarded our plane. Upon arrival they each handed their passports over for checking and stamping. Once we arrived we took a quick tour of the city by watching this video and then visited the main attraction, The Eiffel Tower. We learned about it by watching this video and then we did some tape resist painting art to create our own mini Eiffel Towers. 

Navigating airport security.

There was a bit of confusion over who should fly this week. Immediately after this photo there was a meltdown. Arthur ended up taking a much longer plane trip than Lilly as he was happier flying after Lilly disembarked and he had the controls to himself.

Lilly with her passport stamps so far!

Lilly and her Eiffel Tower.

This was an easy project to set up. Using fingerpaint paper, I applied painters tape in the shape of the tower and then let them paint the paper however they chose using only red, white and blue; the colors of the French flag. Once they were dry I removed the tape. Voila!

Arthur mixed his colors and ended up with a purple tower painting which gave us the opportunity to discuss color mixing. :)

After the long flight and fun at the tower, we needed a break and stopped for a baked treat at a French café. The kids played with this forever and loved taking my order using free printables from here, here and here that I laminated. We used things we already had from the play kitchen and I pulled out the diy doctor's window that I made last summer to be transformed into the bakery storefront. To add to the fun we made some play dough using this quick recipe (and used some store bought I had on hand) and created custom play dough cupcakes complete with their own cupcake liners! 

The bakery stand was made from a three panel science fair board that I made for health week last summer. It's an easy project and you can get the how to at the link above.

In the café I placed a bunch of items from their play kitchen including a coffee maker, desserts and utensils. I also placed the laminated recipe cards, some pretend euros I made and books for the week.

Making the play dough was super quick and easy!

I had a hard time finding French food that I thought the kids would even attempt to try. So, I ended up making crepes for breakfast one day. We actually make them quite often so my kids are not strangers to them. Lilly enjoys peanut butter on hers and Arthur likes jelly/jam like me. The only other French item that was made was for breakfast over the weekend. My husband made Croque Madam which is kind of like a ham and cheese breakfast sandwich with a super yummy mustard based cream sauce and it was fantastic. The kids outright refused and had cinnamon toast crunch instead.

Crepes, eggs and fruit.

Little toot with cinnamon toast crunch.

Little toot #2 with his cereal.

Croque Madam

Even though they may have had limited exposure to French cuisine, they learned a lot about art! We discussed the Impressionist art movement which began in France and learned a little about a few major players including Van Gogh and Degas. To begin, we read a book about each artist for Van Gogh we read "The Starry Night" which was a made up story but gave some great info about the artist, his style and his art. For Degas we read "Chasing Degas" and I really enjoyed this one! It followed a ballerina in search of Degas throughout the city of Paris where she ran into many other famous Impressionists. We also read "Katie Meets the Impressionists" which gave more great info using a fictional tale.

In addition to reading about the artists, we also watched a few videos including more "Art with Mati and Dada" about both Degas and Van Gogh. We also watched this cute video of a 5 year old teaching how to paint like Van Gogh. Lilly was really into it and then created her own version of "The Starry Night". I was super impressed. For more Degas knowledge we watched this short video and also had a mini ballet lesson using this video to get us in the ballerina spirit before learning how to draw our own ballerinas.

Creating her own version of "The Starry Night"

Lilly's version. I didn't help her at all!

Lillian participating in a mini ballerina lesson.

Learning how to draw a ballerina.

In addition to the focus on learning about art, we focused a little on the French language by reading an adorable book called "Everybody Bonjours" and watching several videos that taught a few key French phrases like hello, thank you, please and numbers as well as some classic French songs like "Alouette" and "Frére Jacques".

As always, here are my horrible but fun photo shopped pics of our trip!

We had fun and are ready to visit the U.K. next week! See you soon!