Aspects of winter in French poems and flights of the imagination

It's getting cold outside and I am certain that when we come back to school after Christmas we will be talking with the children about wintry weather, wrapping up warm and maybe even building snowmen.

Today I found this poem on this web page www.mespetitsbonheurs.com and thought that this would make a great poem to use in UKS2 and Y7. 

Les glaçons

Les glaçons qui pendent du toit

Dis-moi, c'est de la glace à quoi ?

Elle n'a pas de couleur,

Elle n'a pas de goût,

Elle n'a pas d'odeur,

Elle n'a rien du tout !

Alors, c'est de la glace à quoi,

Les glaçons qui pendent du toit ?

Corinne Albaut

• What attracted me to the poem was the idea of icicles hanging from the roof of a house and the questions it caused the poet to ask about what is ice ......
• I like the way the poet makes statements that ask questions but he/she doesn't give answers and suggests that the readers can make up their own answers.
• I like the way we can use the text to look at the negative form of the verb and there is potential to investigate the use of more descriptive verbs to replace "avoir"

Let's focus on colour,scent and taste of the icicles in the poem.
We will focus our imaginations on these three negative verbal sentences in the poem:

Elle n'a pas de couleur,

Elle n'a pas de goût,

Elle n'a pas d'odeur,

1. Read the poem with the children and locate the negative forms of the verb "elle n'a pas".Can they see the cognates and semi cognates used as nouns? (couleurs/odeur)? What do they think "goût" might mean? 
2. Now let's investigate ice.Using ice cubes is the poet correct? If we look closely can see any colour in them?Is there any scent to them? What do the ice cubes taste of? 
3. Now ask them to help you to create a magical Winter Wonderland scene( you can link this to Frozen the film for example, Narnia or the original story of the Snow Queen ).Ask the children to create magical icicles.......
4. Give out paper icicle shapes and ask the children working on their tables to write their ideas on their icicle shapes and create magical winter wonderland icicles

• icicles made up of magical colours,
• icicles containing magical scents  
• icicles with tastes and flavours. 

(You will need to remind children of how we linked scents and taste to work on ice cream flavours for example)

Now the children can recreate the poem and with your help can change the three negative statements which use avoir to positive statements e.g "elle n'a pas de couleur" becomes "elle a de couleur"

They can now add the information about their own magical icicles to make their magical winter wonderland poems following the writing template below:

Les glaçons qui pendent du toit

Dis-moi, c'est de la glace à quoi ?

Elle a de couleur,
.............................................

Elle a de goût,
.............................................
Elle a d'odeur,
................................................

Les glaçons qui pendent du toit ?

You now have your poems and your icicles for a magical Winter wonderland display or story book.