Child-friendly self-catering holidays in France

Baby-friendly self-catering holiday cottages in France

Fun ideas for sunny days

by

If you’re anything like me, the idea of dealing with an impending heatwave fills you with the “what on earth will I do with the kids” heebie-jeebies. Even short trips out are fraught with peril – suncreaming a two-year old is trickier than grabbing a bar of soap from the bottom of the bath, and even with a good coating of factor 50 you spend most of your time crossing roads to keep them as shaded as possible on the way to wherever you need to go. The playground is out of bounds between 11-3 due to the absolute lack of any cover anywhere, and staying home just makes everyone irritable and bored. 

So here are some ideas to change things up and entertain your smalls on those “too darn hot” days, whether you’re at home or away. 

1) Water fun 

You don’t need a paddling pool to enjoy some water fun on a sunny day. For a toddler, there’s almost nothing better than a grown up acting like a child – so surprise them with a squirt from a water pistol. Put ice cubes down each others’ backs. Fill a bucket and grab a sponge to soak and toss by their toes, splashing their legs. Tie water balloons to a washing line and hit them till they burst, like piñatas. Dance under the sprinkler for 5 minutes (though please run the hose first – water sitting in the hose can get dangerously hot in the sun). Be silly and cool down at the same time. 

2) Make ice lollies 

Sunny weather and ice lollies go together like, well, strawberries and cream – another summer staple! And kids love the opportunity to make things in the kitchen – even if they’re not usually all that helpful. You can pick up lolly moulds cheaply in most supermarkets and experiment all summer long with different flavours. As a huge bonus, they’ll almost certainly have less refined sugar and additives than the shop-bought alternatives! BBC Good Food has a great selection to get you started – including some more, ahem, grown up flavours – gin and tonic lolly, anyone? 

3) Arts and crafts 

We have a big box full of offcuts of wrapping paper, old bottles and boxes, ribbons and goodness knows what else. Older kids love being creative and seeing what they can make from junk. Get the paints out – bonus marks if you can find a shady spot in the garden so you’re not worried every minute about the cleanup operation. On our last holiday I had a couple of lovely sessions with my 4yo sitting in a shady area outside a cafe while we drew and coloured pictures in together. Or keep a small stash of fun kits to make things (I buy a lot from Baker Ross) – an ideal portable option for popping in your suitcase for trips away. 


4) Have a picnic 

Pack your blanket and some lunch (or hang out for a bit in that lovely chilled deli aisle as you gather your nibbles!), find a shady spot in a park, and enjoy the great outdoors. I was amazed at how long my 15 month old sat still for a picnic last summer – but the novelty was definitely a big selling point! 

5) Visit a museum / art gallery 

This one will depend very much on your child – but these sorts of places tend to be lovely and cool to keep everything in good condition, so can be a great place to spend a few hours staying safe from the sun. Many will either have specific activity sheets for children, or at least signpost the best child-friendly areas online so if you do your research you can make it fun for them. Even if there aren’t specific activities you can make your own – playing “I spy”, having a competition to see who can spot the next dog / something blue / something for cooking with etc. 

6) Teddy spa 

This one isn’t so much a fun thing to do as a necessary intervention… A hot, sunny day is a fantastic opportunity to pop any beloved but, let’s say “less than spotless”, teddies in the washing machine for a quick spa treatment. I put ours into a pillowcase, fastened with a bobble, and do a 20 min 30 degree cycle. Peg them on the line to dry and with a bit of luck you can be done and dusted during naptime with little one none the wiser!

A day in the life of Chiara: A 6 year old in France

by

Bonjour, my name is Chiara and I’m 6 years old. I’m a French pupil in Year 2 at Primary school. In fact, the English and French words for it are nearly the same: in French you would say Ecole primaire and my level would be CP (Cours Préparatoire)

I go to school 4 days a week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, from 8h30 to 16h30. Here in my little town we don’t go to school on Wednesday but somewhere else It could be different: you could start later in the morning, finish earlier in the afternoon but you have to wake up on Wednesday to go to school for a half day. Wednesday afternoon is always free.

Usually I wake up at 7h15 and I go downstairs for my breakfast. My favourite one is when Mummy prepares a hot chocolate with jam toasts, yummy! I also eat fruit: a kiwi, banana or tangerine and I drink a glass of apple juice.

After breakfast I brush my teeth and put my clothes on, brush my hair and I’m ready to leave the house. Usually Mum takes me to school with the car but sometimes we walk, it all depends on the weather. I must say that I really like to walk when there’s snow out there!!!

School starts at 8h30. We are 25 pupils in my class. We always start the day by checking who’s present and who’s not. Then one of us goes in front of the blackboard and spells out the day: Aujourd’hui nous sommes lundi L U N D I ( Today it’s Monday M O N D A Y).

Then we start to work: writing, reading, mathematics, drawing…

We take a little break at 10h, for half an hour. We go outside to play. Running and screaming, playing football or talking with friends are all really fun.

At 10h30 we are back in our classroom to work for another hour.

At 11h30 it’s lunch time, yeepee! I stay at school for lunch as my Mum and Dad are working but it’s not a problem, I like to eat with my friends. Lunch sometimes feels like we are in a restaurant! The ladies who serve us are very nice, we can choose our main course and there’s always a meal with meat and another without meat which is great for my Muslim friends who cannot eat pork and for my vegetarian friends who don’t eat meat.

After lunch we have a long time to play but in my school we also can go to different places – the library, the choir, or the games room where we can play cards or Trivial Pursuit for example, or the theatre class. There is also a special teaching class for the pupils who have difficulties to learn. The teachers help them with mathematics or French, it’s like having a private teacher and make them feel more confident.

At 13h30 we all are back in our classes for 2 hours of intense work but twice a week we do sport. One day we go to the swimming pool with a special bus as the swimming pool is not in our town, and the other time we go to the stadium or to the gymnasium.

At 15h30 it’s the break until 16h. Then we spend the last 30 minutes preparing our schoolbags with what we’ll need at home to do our homework. We don’t have a lot to do, usually only reading and littles games with words.

At 16h30 it’s the end of a long day at school and I’m always happy to see Mum at the school gate! Sometimes she comes with our dog, Fluffy. I know, Fluffy is not very original in English for a dog’s name but believe me, here in France it’s very fancy!

On Wednesday we stop school at 11h30 and we go back home to eat and do our own stuff during the afternoon – I go to my karate class for example. For my friends who have their parents working on Wednesday afternoon there’s a place called Le Centre de loisirs. It’s a big place where you can find everything to have fun: tons of games, drawing sets, chalks, modelling dough and so on. There are sometimes activities such as a trip to the swimming pool, a big walk in the woods, museum visits or sports tournaments. You have to pay to go there but it’s a good solution for working parents.

Well I hope you liked to share a day at French school with me! See you soon! Or as we say in France – a bientôt!

La Fête de la Musique

by

Known and celebrated in more than 100 countries all around the world on 21th of June, do you know that the “Fête de la Musique” was a French idea?

Back in the 80’s our Culture Minister named Jack Lang discovered that Joël Cohen, an American musician living in France and working for the radio channel France Musique” organized musical shows during the summer and winter solstices every year in his auditorium, to celebrate music.

Jack Lang the minister and Maurice Fleuret who was in charge of the dance section at the minister office worked together to propose an event which give total freedom to every musician in France to play in front of an audience, without having to rent a place, and to allow every people to listen to a concert without having to pay a ticket!

The date was chosen as a remembering of the old pagan celebrations which was done on the longest day of the year, symbol of the end of the winter season.

The first Fête de la Musique happened on 21th June 1982: every amateur musician was allowed to go out and play music in the streets, on places, in the wood, wherever you wanted to!

And of course, you could play the kind of music you liked, which was incredible because in Paris’s streets for example, you could, while you were walking around the city, stop by an opera singer and then 100m later you could listen to a Heavy Metal band, then a gospel choir etc…

This was very nice to see and to listen to and at these times it was a really “no filter” music party all over France, from the biggest cities to the smallest villages.

Unfortunately, after few years of total freedom and total mess sometimes too, the cities and villages had to take decisions to keep the Fête de la Musique alive without having bad situations.

A law was voted to give more space to the mayors: they could decide the way the Fête de la Musique will happen in their city. Some of them open the parks and gardens to let orchestras and bands play but only in a specific area, some others close streets to cars to let people walk in the city in total safety, in fact everything is done to keep a good feeling on this special day.

After the success of this French Fête de la Musique a lot of countries around the world decided to have their own Fête de la Musique: Canada, USA, Japan, Sweden… The French Fête de la Musique is known everywhere, sometimes called “World music day” but most of the time the French name is kept.

Currently, in some towns, if the 21th of June is on a week day, the festivities are moved to the week end to let people partying longer. While driving or walking on the streets you could see the posters with the programs or you can find everything on the cities internet websites.

So, if you are in France in June, don’t forget the “Fête de la Musique”and you can say to your friends later: “Did you know that Fête de la Musique was French?”

Rain, rain, go away…

by

Even in summer time rain can invite itself on your holidays and you may have to put up with it! When you are far away from your own place, it’s not easy to find activities for children which don’t need too may accessories.

How do you keep your children busy on a rainy day during the holidays? Here are just a few ideas for family activities on a rainy day:

Bake a cake : Le gâteau au yaourt

We love this really easy-to-bake cake in France because you don’t need a measuring bowl or a set of scales: you use the yoghurt pot to measure all the ingredients! Here’s the recipe:

  • 1 flavoured yoghurt (keep the pot)
  • 3 yoghurt pots of flour
  • 2 and a half yoghurt pots of sugar
  • 1/2 yoghurt pot of vegetable oil (sunflower is the best)
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/2 baking powder sachet

You can add fruit if you want, for example, 2 apples or a can of pineapple or peaches in syrup.
Put all the ingredients in a salad bowl, mix them all together and then put the mixture in an oven proof dish. Let it cook for 40 to 45 minutes, with the oven at thermostat 6 (which is 180°).
Once the cake has cooled, you can cut it in half and put jam or chocolate in it, or serve it with custard or pouring cream.

La pâte à sel (Home made modelling paste)

Cheap and safe (no problems if it ends up being ingested!), la pâte à sel is also very easy to prepare as the only ingredients you’ll need can be found in every supermarket: just flour and salt!
The recipe is simple:

  • 1 measure of salt
  • 2 measures of flour
  • 1 measure of tepid water

Mix the flour and salt and add water until you get a non-sticky paste. Let the mixture sit for an hour.

You can add spices to colour the paste, such as paprika, curcuma, cinnamon etc…
Let your creations dry for at least 24 hours, and then cook them slowly (oven 110° for 1h30 minimum)

Once they are dry and cooked, you can paint them.

A paper planes race

For this activity, all you need is sheets of paper! Create your paper plane and decorate it.
Prepare the race area with start and stop points and there you go, start throwing your planes and just watch who the winner is!

The mystery bag

Nothing simpler and cheaper than this activity as you’ll have nothing to buy!

Grab everything you find around you, from outside and inside: a pine cone, a stone, a piece of wood, a spoon, a hair brush, a tube of toothpaste, a key, a pen, a button, a nut… and put all of these items in a bag or in a box. Make sure no one can see through the bag.

The game is easy: in (for example) 1 minute you have to name as many objects as you can just by touching them, without looking. You can play one by one or create teams.

Holidays to remember…

by

It’s always great to leave our own country to discover another one, and of course we all want to bring back souvenirs for friends, family and for ourselves!

But these commercial souvenirs are often not very personal – sometimes they are not even made in the country and they can be so expensive!

Here is a list of our home-made souvenirs that you could bring back home after your holiday! Special souvenirs that you can create with your children, who will be so proud to give them to their Grandparents or friends!

A decorated pebble:

In Normandy, a lot of beaches are shingly ones. What a great present to put on a desk: a painted pebble from a Normandy beach! Children can paint them with their fingers – fingerprints make beautiful flower petals.

You also can pick up wild flowers in the fields, let them dry, glue them on to the pebble, then spray some varnish to protect them.

But be careful, you don’t have the right to collect pebbles on every beach so check the signs before you do it – you don’t want your holiday souvenir to be the day you got a ticket for collecting forbidden shingle.

An herbarium:

Very easy to create, even for a child! An herbarium is a very nice way to remember where you were, with leaves, and flowers you have collected on holiday!

After you cleaned the dirt or mud off the leaves, just put your finds between 2 paper tissues or toilet paper sheets and then leave them in a book to make them flat. Let them dry over several days. When they are dry you can glue them into a notebook and write the name of the flower or tree and where you found it. You can add pictures you took of the place and write the way you felt when you were there. It’s a great way to teach your children to express their feelings!

And a beautiful flower from a French meadow glued on a nice piece of paper will make a wonderful bookmark to give to friends and family back home!

A family travel diary:

The label of the camembert cheese you ate, the sweetie wrapper, leaves, entrance tickets to a special place you went to visit as a family…. Every little thing can be a big part of a great memory album done with the whole family!

Choose a beautiful notebook or a filing case (easier if you need to add a sheet) and as you visit places don’t forget to write what you see or learn. Your eldest children can write as the youngest can draw or decorate the sheets.

When you go to visit a castle or to the beach for example, don’t forget to take paper and pencils with you and ask your children to draw what they see and add the drawings to your diary.
Every evening, one of the family member can be in charge of the day resumé. Yes, even the youngest! You’ll be amazed to discover that sometimes what your children keep in mind can be so different to your memories!

A shell, a stone or a piece of wood, a drawing, sand, nature gives us so many beautiful things – go on, be creative!

And don’t forget that the simplest gift chosen with love is the most beautiful present for the one you choose to give it to!