10 days to go: mon cartable!!

Jesse, I'm so excited for you to see this! Yesterday, Josiah and I worked to finish memorizing the "Mon Cartable" poem. I recorded him reciting it over lunch today and then took the scant hour available this afternoon (while William was at maternelle) to add my best stab at translation. You'll beam when you watch him.

For non-Jesse readers: Josiah has been making great progress in school in just 5 weeks. He's mastered French-style cursive handwriting, is becoming comfortable with an increasing array of phrases and words, is making friends, and has figured out a million and one little cultural things about how school works here. I'm so proud of his hard work, so proud of him.

In particular, rote learning and recitation are relatively common practices here, tough in a foreign language. Although this poem initially was a huge jumble of unrelated syllables, Josiah's been nothing but positive and persistent in learning it. The poem itself amuses me a little. It's about "my backpack" and its thousand smells (e.g., oranges, caramel). But...it gets a little existential by the end ("the long hair of my mother," "mornings in the light"). I suppose it's nice for 6-8 year olds to be learning something a little more poetic and artsy than the goofy, sing-song fare we usually feed to kids, right?  :)

[I'd suggest viewing it full screen...] 


Mon Cartable from Krista Casler on Vimeo.