French Resources: Le Carnaval de Québec

 
Every year at our school, we take a few days to celebrate in the style of le Carnaval de Québec and invite students to participate in fun games and activities. This may range from school-wide bingo over the P.A. system, poster contests, mask design, parades, French café and more. We usually kick it off with an assembly in the gym led by the grade 8 students who are in the midst of the Fêtes et Mardi Gras unit. This year, we wanted to try something different that would get the students excited over the celebration so I posted a thread on the Ontario Core French Teachers group on Facebook looking for some ideas. And thanks to some great tips, I think I now have what I'm looking for:

The official Carnaval de Québec website has a whole bunch of videos, photos and samples of songs from the album "En amour avec hiver" (including lyrics). You can also order last year's effigies and posters for a very low price but you need to place your orders early since they sell out every year. The site also has a teacher's corner where you can download free worksheets.


For the assembly, I wanted an updated video that illustrated the many activities one can enjoy at the carnival and the video above is just perfect! I can't wait to show it to the students. We have already received our order of last year's effigies, which are absolutely adorable. They're like mini figurines. We use these as prizes as well as some Bonhomme beanies that we ordered from Tralco-Lingo. I have already been bringing my Bonhomme puppet to class and will pick students to use the puppet during French. They love being able to answer questions while playing the role of Bonhomme.

There are only a few weeks left to prepare everything but if you have any ideas or suggestions, I hope you will share them in the comments section below. It's always good to try something new every year. Merci et...

Joyeux Carnaval!