For my grade 1 French class, we have a program called Dimoitou. If you went to school here in Toronto, there's a chance you may even remember the main character, a green, lanky puppet that is always an instant hit with the little ones. Sometimes, I will pick a student of the day to take care of Dimoitou during class but I thought it would be great to let them take Dimoitou home as incentive to practice their French. I got the idea from when my daughter was in nursery school and they had a similar take-home teddy. Only I call this Dimoitou chez nous!  Given that this full-size Dimoitou puppet is our only one and they are no longer in stock, I decided to make my own Dimoitou hand puppets out of felt. They were fairly easy to make once I created the initial design and didn't talk all that long to stitch together.

Then I created a cover page to be glued onto a primary notebook and coloured it in. (Tip: I 'laminated' it using packing tape!) This was our classroom journal where the students would draw a picture of what they did with Dimoitou. For example, did they sing a song, read a book or play with Dimoitou? While they weren't required to write anything down, I did include a language card to help them get started with a greeting, an introduction and a series of sentences au passé composé that they could copy if they wanted to. (Tip: I printed this on card stock to make it a little more durable.) Many of them chose to do so, some parents helped them write their own sentences and some wrote as little as, Bonjour! There were a couple of students who didn't have to time to finish their drawings or journal entries at home so I gave them time in class the next day to finish, especially since they really wanted to contribute. Students were also delighted to have me read their journal entries and share their drawings with the class. 

On the inside front cover of the journal, I included a note to parents explaining a little about the Dimoitou take-home program and that it was completely optional. The goal was merely to have students engage with the puppet and practice what they have learned in French outside of the classroom. On the inside back cover, I glued a class list and kept track of those who had their turn. I placed the journal, the language card and the Dimoitou puppet inside a large zipper bag for storage and included a sharpened pencil, a pack of pencil crayons and a beginner book from our levelled readers collection. The one in the photo above has a lot of repetition and vocabulary already covered in class. It also tied in well with my French rendition of a popular Wiggles song, Salade de fruits!