November 28, 2006 at 11:05 am · Filed under Family Life in England, French Language, Planning the move
We stayed at Aunty Debs this weekend, in London Town and while we were there, I thought it might be worth a trip to a Waterstones to see what is available in the Learning French section.
We went to the Gower Street shop, which is an amazing experience! Four floors, possibly five, of books, books, books! It was very difficult to walk around without being distracted, so we had to put our blinkers on.
The language section is huge, from French to Mandarin to Arabic and back again. We managed to find a section just for childrens French, where we found Serge the Cheeky Monkey!
The pack consists of a DVD, CD, parents’ guide, workbook and flash cards and at £25, I thought it was worth a try. So armed with our new French is Fun! activity box and a couple of French childrens’ dictionarys, we left very pleased with our efforts.
So far, the DVD has proved very popular, with both children enjoying the antics and songs of Serge and his friend Pascale, the parrot. The format is the same for all of the programmes, Serge and Pascale deal with basic language ’sets’…Je m’appelle, le temps, la famille etc. There is a cartoon of the Coco football team and slots where Serge visits France to meet real French children. In each the recently acquired French is repeated throughout.
I am hoping that the enthusiasm for learning French is not short lived and that both Diddy and The Boy have a smattering of the language before we leave. If they keep up with Serge, as they are doing, I don’t see why not!
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November 24, 2006 at 2:43 pm · Filed under Family Life in England, French Language, Planning the move
I had a little chat with Diddy the other day about her concerns on moving to France. At that point she wasn’t at all keen on the idea, so I thought a discussion on the pros and cons of the idea may be of benefit to her.
It would appear that her major concerns are:
- Missing Daddy
- Missing her friends
- Not being able to understand French
All reasonable fears!
Which brings me on to Muzzy. I have seen the adverts and always thought the character Muzzy looked and sounded a bit odd. I never took it any further. It was Diddys father who suggested it the other day and so I checked out the website.
It offers a free months trial, with only posting and packaging to pay for and then monthly instalments up to a total of £150. It seems quite expensive, but if the claims are true, she will wake up one morning, after having watched a few cartoons and be speaking French. Wow! Maybe it is worth it!
My theory is that even with just a smattering of the basics, Diddy may be a little more relaxed and confident in her abilities to understand and make friends. She is doing a bit of French at school already and I am pleasantly surprised at how much she is picking up on only half an hour a week. Maybe a bit of Muzzying is all she needs to help her on her way!
Does anyone have any experience of the course? If so, please let me know what you thought of it.
I am pleased to say that after our little chat she is now much more keen on the idea and wants to sell the house now, take the Bilbao boat and move over.
Do you know anyone who wants to buy a house?
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November 23, 2006 at 6:11 pm · Filed under Aquitaine
November 23, 2006 at 12:40 am · Filed under Trials and Tribulations....
As you know, I have been unhappy with the photographs on the website, so today, I had a look at it again in an attempt to improve things.
I thought that the thumbnails were too small to show any detail or real information and when I tried to enlarge them as thumbnails, they became even more grainy.
So, what to do? I went back into each page and reloaded the photos but this time as ‘original’ size and re-sized them from there. The results are much better, I think and I am much happier with them now.
What do you think?
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November 21, 2006 at 10:02 pm · Filed under Planning the move
Well, after much deliberation and stalling, I finally linked the Beauregard website into the Bonnes Vacances advert that we run. So we’ve kind of gone ‘official’ with it!
I have been waiting for the chance to re-register the domain name as Beauregard.co.uk. It is registered with my BIL at the moment, but due to work constraints and other commitments, we are unable to do it at the moment. We will, I know, so in the meantime, it is running as a .wordpress domain. Not ideal but the content is the same.
I am quite pleased with the site…I like the simplicity of the WordPress template and it’s style …it’s the same as the blog here, but with a different header. I think the days of flashy intro’s and glittery, bling text are gone and we are now seeing more minimilistic sites, where the content and pictures do the hard work…without being cheesy and kitch! I hope that I have achieved that anyway.
Having said that, the thumbnails on the site, for some reason do not replicate well at all. They are grainy and frankly quite poor! They do improve when enlarged but I will need to look into the reasons why and do something about it. The Flikr pictures in contrast, look a lot better.
So, the website is now up and running! I think it will be constantly updated, but it is something I really enjoy doing so it won’t be a chore.
Please leave me your comments/thoughts on the website. If there are glaringly obvious errors or typo’s, or if you think it is dire….I would love to know.
It is a good start though!
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