5 fun activities for practising les classes de mots

As with a traditional game of seek-and-find, the goal of this game is to find items located in a designated space. In this version, player 1 asks player 2 to find X number of French words belonging to a particular classe de mots in their immediate environment. Here are a few examples of words you might come up with at the park:

• 5 adjectifs (e.g., vert, doux, lumineux, bruyant, propre)
• 5 noms (e.g., herbe, arbre, banc, glissade, balançoire)
• 5 verbes (e.g., courir, sauter, lire, respirer, éternuer)

The words will vary depending on where you play, but you’ll always have lots of fun!

For this game, you’ll need a die and eight pieces of paper. Before you begin, write the different classes de mots on the pieces of paper and put them in a bowl. To make sure you don’t forget any, here’s a list of all eight (links in French):

• le nom (e.g., champignon, étoile, courage)
• le déterminant (e.g., le, une, des)
• le pronom (e.g., je, nous, elles)
• le verbe (e.g., voler, apprendre, grandir)
• l’adjectif (e.g., petit, brillante, jaune)
• la préposition (e.g., à, de, par, pour, avec)
• l’adverbe (e.g., très, souvent, partout)
• la conjonction (e.g., mais, ou, et, car)

The players take turns rolling the die and drawing a random category from the bowl. The objective is to come up with the wackiest sentence possible using the number you roll and the classe de mots you get. For instance, if you roll a 2 and draw verbe, you have to come up with a silly sentence in French that contains two verbs. Here are a couple of examples:

• Player rolls a 3, draws adjectif: Le moustique malin et le renard rusé s’apprêtent à jouer un tour à l’éléphant ennuyant.
• Player rolls a 4, draws determinant: La cigale a chanté une chanson sur l’été au karaoké.

Tired of hearing “Are we there yet?” whenever your child is in the car with you? To make the drive go by more quickly, try playing a few rounds of grammatical I Spy in French! The rules are simple:

• Player 1 chooses something they can see from their window.
• They identify which classe de mots it belongs to.
• They state a riddle for player 2:
  • Example 1: I spy with my little eye a French adjective that starts with C. (answer: chaud)
  • Example 2: I spy with my little eye a French verb that starts with J. (answer: jardiner)
• Player 2 tries to solve the riddle. For the next round, player 2 chooses a word for player 1 to guess, and so on.

For this activity, you’ll need a French-language comic strip or storybook. On each page, ask your child to find a certain number of pronouns or adverbs. This activity will also help improve your child’s reading fluency!

The popular Alloprof game Potager en péril was designed to help students master les classes de mots. Featuring eye-catching graphics, it’s a highly effective educational tool for kids thanks to its combination of practice exercises and pure game sequences.