As we near the end of May, I love to find new and creative ways to encourage my French students to speak en français in an authentic setting that gives them an opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned throughout the year. And what can be more authentic than playing a game, am I right? The current theme in our grade 1 Dimoitou program focuses on the farm and there is one story that follows a mother hen in her search for Petit Poussin. It's a cute little story and the students love playing the role of Maman Poule and, using their best hen voice, shouting out: "Petit Poussin, Petit Poussin, où es-tu?"

Yesterday, I had the idea of creating a game board in Google Slides made of eight tiles that covered a hidden image in the background. I thought I could use animations to have the tiles slowly fade away "on click" and reveal a part of the image but, as I soon discovered, when using this method in "present" mode, the tiles would fade away in the order they appear on the animation panel. This simply wouldn't work if I wanted students to randomly pick a tile since there is no way to have that specific tile fade away by clicking on it directly. 

Today, I resigned to playing the game in "edit" mode and decided to manually delete each tile to reveal the hidden image. While not the perfect solution, it worked out well. I did have to hide the menu bar, maximize the window and adjust the view to make it fill the screen as much as possible. And, because my first trial run revealed the barn that I had originally hidden in the slide master, I chose to use a tractor instead. Initially, I thought I would have the students try to figure out what was hiding underneath the tiles but I am fairly certain that would be too easy. Instead, I took inspiration from the Petit Poussin story and hid a chick either on, under, beside, behind, inside or in front of the tractor. This would afford an opportunity for students to demonstrate their understanding of prepositions. Score! Then, to make game play even easier, I created different layouts in the slide master and adjusted the location of the chick, added additional slides with the new layouts, copied and pasted the tiles on top of each of them and voilà! Six rounds ready to go!

So how does the game work?

For now, I left the tiles the same on each slide so students can build their confidence in describing the images. I can, however, easily change the image on each tile to vary the vocabulary, which makes this game board pretty much adaptable to any theme or grammar concept. Or, I can create a more difficult board by filling it with smaller tiles. Care to have a peek? I have included a "view only" link below and if you like it, feel free to make a copy (click on File - Make a copy) and edit at will. 

Petit Poussin Google Slides Hidden Object French Game

The slide I used for the preposition à côté de confuses the students because they want to say derrière le tracteur so I'm thinking of creating another version with a stable or a barn where the front of the building is facing the viewer. You can do that, too, by replacing the tractor in the slide master (click on Slide - Edit master). Be sure to change it on the "Master" slide if you want it to appear on all slides. Then, you can adjust the chick on the individual layouts. I also chose to rename each layout based on the preposition just to make it easier to select the layouts I want to use.

You might be wondering how I hid the chick behind the wheel in the last slide. Since the tractor appears in the Master slide, I cannot layer anything underneath it in the subsequent layouts. A simple solution is to copy and paste the tractor on to that layout and sandwich Petit Poussin in between. You can adjust the layers by right-clicking on the images and reconfiguring their order.

You may notice that the images I have layered on top of the tiles are attached to them. I did this by selecting both the tile and the image while holding down the "shift" key, right clicking on one of them, and selecting the "group" option. To replace the image on the tile, click on it twice and delete it. When inserting a new image, resize and reposition it, then regroup the tile with the new image.

Hope you get a chance to try the game in your class. And should you have any tips, suggestions or extension ideas, I would love to hear from you. As always, feel free to leave a comment below if you'd like to share or if you ever have any questions.

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!

After sketching out a rough design, I used green, red, yellow and black felt to cut out the body, mouth, eyes and nose. Then came the hard part: sewing all the pieces together. I don't own a sewing machine so I resorted to the needle-and-thread method. You know, the one where I prick myself at least once twice thrice. While my stitching technique could use much improvement, I feel the Dimoitou puppet turned out just fine. 

I am putting together three sets of Dimoitou chez nous take-home bags, one for each of my grade 1 classes, which will contain a Dimoitou puppet, a Dimoitou chez nous journal, a pencil, a pack of pencil crayons to illustrate an activity, a book to read, a contents checklist and instructions for the parents as well as a vocabulary reference sheet should they want to attempt writing out a sentence. I am hopeful that students will be enthusiastic in sharing what they are learning with their families while caring for Dimoitou. If you'd like to make your own Dimoitou puppet, I have included my template for you below. (Click on the thumbnail to download a PDF copy.)