Courses · French · Kindergarten to high school
French
The language of Champlain and Pascal, of Notre-Dame and the Louis Segond Bible, spoken by about three hundred million people on five continents and a close daughter of Latin, taught the old way: stories first, then saying it out loud, then making things with your hands. Each short course is built around real people and places, Champlain’s Habitation at Quebec, Millet’s peasants at prayer, La Fontaine’s fables, Pasteur and Braille, and teaches the grammar those stories open up. A student who has met our Latin courses will keep finding old friends here, because French is Latin worn smooth by the centuries.
Choose a grade · Kindergarten to Grade 8
Ages 5–6
Kindergarten
French by ear: bonjour and au revoir, colors, counting to ten, the body and the animals, sung, acted out and drawn, with a painting in every unit and a Bible verse in every lesson.
Ages 6–7
Grade 1
The family and the house, the days of the week, breakfast and fruit, clothes and the weather, sung, acted out and drawn.
Ages 7–8
Grade 2
The alphabet and its accents, school things and numbers to twenty, the months and Christmas, animals of the farm and the sea, and the first lines of the Notre Père.
Ages 8–9
Grade 3
Greetings and good manners from France to Quebec, numbers and French arithmetic, colors and shapes, the family at table, and animals from pets to the lark of Alouette.
Ages 9–10
Grade 4
The house and where things are, school and the verb avoir, dates, seasons and weather, likes and sports, and a tour of France from Mont-Saint-Michel to Notre-Dame de Paris.
Ages 10–11
Grade 5
Where French came from, cognates and false friends, le and la and plurals, regular -er verbs, être and adjectives that agree, and asking questions.
Ages 11–12
Grade 6
The three great irregular verbs avoir, aller and faire, the near future, telling time and daily schedules, and two of La Fontaine’s fables learned by heart.
Ages 12–13
Grade 7
Numbers to one hundred, the verbs of movement and venir, the passé composé with avoir and with être, and tales told in the past, with the French explorers and saints of North America.
Ages 13–14
Grade 8
-ir and -re verbs, reflexive verbs and the daily routine, pouvoir, vouloir and devoir, letter writing, Psalm 23 in the Louis Segond, and the imparfait, with Pascal, Pasteur, Braille and Victor Hugo.
High school · French I
A full-year course for high-school students beginning French: 12 units of 3 lessons, one lesson a week for 36 weeks, four sessions of 40–50 minutes, with unit tests, a midterm and a final exam, and separate answer keys for the parent. A student who finished Grade 8 will know much of the first half and can move faster there.
Grades 9–12
French I
From bonjour to the passé composé: être and avoir, the present tense, the partitive, reflexive and modal verbs and the past, with Courbet, Monet, Chardin, Georges de La Tour, the Bayeux Tapestry and Champlain’s Quebec, and a verse of the Louis Segond Bible in every lesson.
How every lesson works
Each course from kindergarten to grade 8 is a short course: 5 units of 2 lessons, one lesson a week, about one quarter of the school year. Each week has three sessions: 15–20 minutes in kindergarten through grade 2, where the lessons are sung, acted out and drawn, 20–30 minutes in grades 3 and 4, and 30–40 minutes from grade 5 on: one to learn, one to make, one to practice and speak. French I is a full high-school year with four longer sessions a week. Grammar spirals grade by grade, the way the old books did it: each year repeats the patterns out loud and adds one or two new structures.
- Warm-up. A few minutes of saying French out loud: the week’s sounds and phrases, the verb charts, with a puzzle to think about.
- Watch. A hand-picked YouTube video from an approved teaching channel, with a note on when to watch it.
- Learn. The story, how French works, and say it out loud, in short sections a parent can read aloud, with a pronunciation guide for every new word.
- Picture study. A painting, engraving or tapestry in every unit, Millet, Courbet, Monet, Chardin, Georges de La Tour, the Bayeux Tapestry, Champlain’s own drawing of Quebec, to look at closely and talk about.
- Activity. The student makes something every week: labels for the house, a paper clock, a family tree, a café menu, a weather report, a crèche, a timeline.
- French notebook and flashcards. A notebook of dated charts and sentences, and a flashcard deck that grows every lesson and is drilled every session.
- Worked examples and practice. Translation drills in both directions, French to English and English to French, with answers to check, easy through challenge.
Each unit ends with a short review and a unit challenge, from a song in kindergarten to a fable recited by heart in Grade 6, Psalm 23 in Grade 8 and a five-minute presentation on a French-speaking country at the end of French I.
Every lesson has a Bible verse in the King James Version beside the Louis Segond 1910, the French Bible still loved by French-speaking Protestants around the world.
Nothing needs to be bought. Activities use index cards, paper, pencil, crayons and things from around the house. Each unit also lists optional books and free resources.
Every course can also be downloaded as one printable PDF, with the video links printed in each lesson. Worksheets come with separate answer keys for the parent.
Videos open on YouTube. Every embedded video comes from a teaching channel approved for School Launch, but YouTube shows its own recommendations and ads around them, so parents should preview the videos and stay nearby.