{"id":25560,"date":"2016-12-20T05:02:38","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T04:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=25560"},"modified":"2018-03-06T21:21:29","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T20:21:29","slug":"un-cadeau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/un-cadeau\/","title":{"rendered":"Un cadeau*"},"content":{"rendered":"

12 years ago when I was a French teacher, le mois de d\u00e9cembre <\/strong>(the month of December<\/em>) presented a special challenge. As the winter break and les f\u00eates de fin d\u2019ann\u00e9e <\/strong>(year end holidays<\/em>) approached, keeping kids focused on lessons and learning became more and more difficult. Especially in the last week before les vacances**<\/strong> (vacation), <\/em>anything ressembling real work became pretty much impossible. What was a teacher to do?<\/p>\n

One easy trick: hide the work in a fun activity! To that end, I created a word search that featured holiday and winter-related vocabulary. If you’d like to take a shot at it yourself, you can click here to save the holiday word search to your computer<\/a>. If you look hard enough, you can find all of the following French terms in the grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
bonhomme de neige<\/strong><\/td>\nsnowman<\/em><\/td>\ngui<\/strong><\/td>\nmistletoe<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
P\u00e8re No\u00ebl<\/strong><\/td>\nFather Christmas \/ Santa<\/em><\/td>\ng\u00e2teaux<\/strong><\/td>\ncakes<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
flocons de neige<\/strong><\/td>\nsnow flakes<\/em><\/td>\nhoux<\/strong><\/td>\nholly<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
No\u00ebl
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n		Christmas<\/em><\/td>\nguirlande<\/strong><\/td>\ngarland<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
tra\u00eeneau
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n		sled \/ sleigh<\/em><\/td>\ncloche<\/strong><\/td>\nbell<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
sapin<\/strong><\/td>\npine \/ Christmas tree<\/em><\/td>\nd\u00e9corations<\/strong><\/td>\ndecorations<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
cadeaux<\/strong><\/td>\ngifts<\/em><\/td>\nd\u00e9cembre<\/strong><\/td>\nDecember<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
R\u00e9veillon<\/strong><\/td>\nChristmas Eve celebration<\/em><\/td>\nrenne<\/strong><\/td>\nreindeer<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
bougies<\/strong><\/td>\ncandles<\/em><\/td>\namour<\/strong><\/td>\nlove<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
froid<\/strong><\/td>\ncold<\/em><\/td>\nchampagne<\/strong><\/td>\nChampagne<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
hiver<\/strong><\/td>\nwinter<\/em><\/td>\nbuche de Noel<\/strong><\/td>\nYule Log<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
foie gras<\/strong><\/td>\ngoose liver<\/em><\/td>\nsantons<\/strong><\/td>\n\u00a0<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
joie<\/strong><\/td>\njoy<\/em><\/td>\n\u00e9toile<\/strong><\/td>\nstar<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
chemin\u00e9e<\/strong><\/td>\nchimney<\/em><\/td>\nange<\/strong><\/td>\nangel<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
jouets<\/strong><\/td>\ntoys<\/em><\/td>\nv\u0153ux<\/strong><\/td>\nwishes<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

La semaine derni\u00e8re <\/strong>(Last week<\/a>) <\/em>I shared one of my favorite French “holiday” movies with you. I realized afterwards that I had neglected to mention two other “classics” that are equally great at this time of year despite a decidely “non traditional” take on winter and the holidays. Both come from the crazy minds of the creaters of le Th\u00e9\u00e2tre du Splendid<\/a><\/strong> (sort of a French “Second City” created by a group of friends in the 70’s who went on to great success in French entertainment). If you’re still looking for some entertainment . . . or the perfect gift for that one wacky francophile friend . . . might I suggest Le p\u00e8re No\u00ebl est un ordure <\/strong><\/a>(Santa Claus is a jerk) <\/em>and Les bronz\u00e9s font du ski <\/strong><\/a>(litterally “The tan ones go skiing”<\/em>).
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

* A gift<\/em><\/p>\n

** Note that “les vacances” <\/em>is always plural in French . . . perhaps because they have so much of it! The word “vacance<\/em>” (singular) refers to a vacancy and was originally specific to the absence of a king or the Pope. In more general terms it came to refer to the period when a legislative body was away from its functions and ulitmately to any absence from work . . . but always now in the plural to refer to a period of time away from work or school.<\/p>\n

Photo Credits:<\/p>\n

Swowman By Peter Berger, CC BY-SA 3.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=5557410
\nFather Christmas \/ Santa Claus By dierk schaefer (Stra\u00dfburg\/P\u00e8re Noel\u00a0 Uploaded by Edelseider) [CC BY 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
\nSnowflake By Electron and Confocal Microscopy Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture[1] – http:\/\/emu.arsusda.gov\/snowsite\/, Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=256624
\nChristmas Market By Office de Tourisme de Colmar (Colmar – Christmas Markets 2010) [CC BY 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

12 years ago when I was a French teacher, le mois de d\u00e9cembre (the month of December) presented a special challenge. As the winter break and les f\u00eates de fin d\u2019ann\u00e9e (year end holidays) approached, keeping kids focused on lessons and learning became more and more difficult. Especially in the last week before les vacances**…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":25576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[284,432,12514],"class_list":["post-25560","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-vocabulary","tag-free-french-lessons","tag-french-vocabulary","tag-vocabulaire-francais"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25560"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29837,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25560\/revisions\/29837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}