Apr 15, 2020
If you are like many of the parents I know, you are probably counting the days until the library opens it doors again, just to be able to attend those wonderful Storytimes every week. Even though you may join our live Storytimes on Zoom some weekday mornings, you and your kids just can’t get enough of it. And since bilingual Storytimes and French Storytimes are less common, you may be looking for options to expose your children to French while quarantined. Fear not, we got you covered!
The Ottawa Public Library Youtube channel, 1,2,3, on chante, is exactly what you are looking for. The channel was created in 2016 as an educational resource for librarians, teachers and educators that wanted to add some French content to their Storytimes and reading circles or build up their French repertoire of lullabies and rhymes.
If you’re not familiar with the resource, the channel has more than 115 videos of librarians and children programmers from the Ottawa Public Library presenting French children songs (classics lullabies, thematic nursery rhymes and seasonal modifications). Videos are uploaded to Youtube frequently, averaging a new video every two weeks. The most recent video is only a few days old! If you have not been visiting the channel for a while, you probably missed a lot of hidden gems.
Even though the site has been put in place for the teachers and librarians of this world, the resource is also great for parents who needs to diversify their bedtime French lullabies, for Anglophones who wish to bring a little bit of French in their household to expose their children to that language, or even for the kids who wants to sing nursery rhymes on repeat all day long with their favorite librarians.
And the best in all of this? You can play the videos all day and all night long and it won’t lose its voice! It will give you parents a well-deserved break and will make your little one smile, sing and dance. I hope you enjoy!
Blog post contributed by Ariane from our Nepean Centrepointe branch.