Pupils of an Aberdeen primary school have put on a nativity with a continental twist – by performing the classic Christmas play entirely in French.
Under the guidance of their teacher Erica Hastie, 26, the girls and boys of Broomhill school put on their best dish towels and told the story of the birth of Christ using a simple French script.
Despite only starting to learn French in August, the young madams and monsieurs managed to perfectly recite the play to a crowd full of proud parents and grandparents yesterday.
Ms Hastie, who studied French on the side at university, said that having her class perform the play en Francais will be hugely beneficial to their education, and not just for their language skills.
She said: “Learning another language when you’re young is so important for a child’s development, and not just for when they go on holiday.
“There’s a whole range of other benefits, like how they understand and comprehend the English language itself, and an appreciation of French cultures all over the world from Canada to Africa.
“They’ve been rehearsing every Friday for the past six weeks, so today’s performance was the end of a lot of hard work for them, and they really enjoyed it, as did their mums and dads and grandparents who all seemed pretty pleased as well.
“Already we’re seeing little bits of French vocabulary coming out of them, so far its only little things like the odd ‘merci’ or ‘bien’, but since they only started in August having them speaking French in other classes is really amazing.
“I had the idea after I found a really simple script for the nativity in French, so I thought that if any class was perfect for this it was my class, they were all just so keen to begin.
“We had the usual three wise men, three shepherds, a Mary, a Joseph, an innkeeper, an angel and two narrators, but no animals because of course they would have no lines.
“Everyone did really well, but because the narrators had so many lines they got scripts to read, because it’s only fair.
“They think speaking French is really cool, I’m so proud of how far they’ve come in so little time”