A seven-year-old girl from Newmarket has excelled in learning a new language to impress her ambulance hero dad.
Newmarket youngster Amelia Rampling has continued going to school throughout the coronavirus lockdown, while single parent father Mike continues to save lives on the NHS frontline.
Amelia began learning French last year to impress her dad, who himself has always had a passion for the language – but has excelled during lockdown thanks to the help of a local French teacher.
In her latest lesson, Amelia painted her own “arc-en-ciel d’espoir” – or “rainbow of hope” – which has found pride of place at their family home.
Mr Rampling said: “I spoke a few words of French to Amelia last September and she found it fascinating and fun especially when she copied me. She took it upon herself to start learning lots of different words and could even decipher labels of ingredients on food packaging!
“Amelia has had a somewhat difficult start in life so when she asked if she could learn French “properly”, I wanted to support her as much as I could with something she would enjoy, so we signed up to local French teacher Kristine Bantick’s weekly French Club.”
Kristine, who runs the La Jolie Ronde Fun French For Children classes, said she was determined to ensure Amelia continued on her bilingual journey.
She added: “Amelia is an enthusiastic learner with natural ability.
“Her ‘arc-en-ciel’ picture was part of our topic on colours and Amelia jumped at the challenge of working out the various shades that were written in French. It was heart-warming to hear that she had completed the picture with her dad in mind.”
Mr Rampling added learning became even more fun as the pair saw the brighter side of IT problems.
He said: “I felt sad that Amelia might lose the progress she was making in French. However Kristine was on the case and with the online classes, Amelia was able to continue her lessons from home.
“Despite my poor IT set-up at home, we managed to get up and running using my old mobile phone. Even this kept overheating and turning off but we persevered and with some frozen peas we have had lots of fun with Kristine’s classes.”
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