For over 25 years, Janice Cummins has been considered one of the few experts in teaching French to children. When she established the Janice Cummins Petite Ecole in 1979, she received stirring endorsements from Monsieur Maurice Galy, the late president of the Lycée Français de New York; and Monsieur Michel Domaine, former Educational Counselor of the French Embassy. Madame Cummins, formerly a teacher of French language and literature to young adults, found her true calling when her daughter was 4 years old and ready for formal French lessons; thus, she wrote and developed a unique program for children between the ages of 4 and 12. The 4 and 5 year olds enter the school as “Les Pêches” and the 6-12 year olds enter as “Les Carottes.” Framed by original songs, games, poetry, role playing, drawing exercises, movement and group activities, her method - eclectic in approach and active in nature - is rooted in the intuitive learning of sentence structure. Her classes are not playgroups designed to teach a smattering of French in a few weeks; rather, at the Janice Cummins Petite Ecole, conversational French courses are offered annually from September to June in a 5 year developmental sequence and culminate with a 6th year of formal introduction to reading and writing. Each lesson is reinforced by a corresponding cassette tape produced by Madame Cummins. Parents are an integral part of the learning process in that they spend the last five minutes of class with Madame Cummins when she explains the grammatical dynamics underlying each lesson. The mother of two Princeton graduates, Madame Cummins truly understands the emotional as well as the intellectual needs of young children and encourages them to believe in themselves as well as in the beauty and wonder of the French language and culture.