Have you ever been to France?! Let’s discover five fun France facts for kids.
People who live in France call it by many names and one of those nicknames is “L’Hexagone” which means ‘The hexagon’ in French. They call it this because of the geographical shape of France. When you look at France on a map you will see it has six sides, and is shaped a bit like a hexagon which is where this fun nickname comes from.
Roundabouts are super fun in the playground but they are also very useful on the roads for drivers. A French Architect calledPierre L’Enfant was the man who designed the first ever roundabouts, called traffic circles. In 1790 he proposed them as a form of intersection for Washington DC in the United States. These intersections helped drivers stay safe as they could meet other vehicles on the intersection but they would be travelling much slower so there were less accidents.
France has one of the worlds’ most famous roundabouts called the Champs-Élysées where 12 roads meet in one big circle. In the middle is the Arch de Triumph, a very famous French landmark.
King Louis XIX became King of France because his father abdicated the throne during the July Revolution in 1830. When a monarch abdicates it means they no longer hold their title and pass it to the next person in line to the throne. When Louis Antoine’s father Charles the tenth abdicated he became king but he did not want to be King either. After just 20 minutes as king he abdicated as well. He holds the record for the shortest reign of any king in history.
The Statue of Liberty in New York was designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, a French sculptor. It was built as a gift to the people of America from the people of France. The structure of the Statue of Liberty was built by the same French civil engineer who built the Eiffel Tower.
If you visit Paris you can see eight smaller forms of the Statue of Liberty including one that is a quarter of the size of the original. This one can be seen from the Grenelle Bridge.
France is known for their interesting food, with delicacies such as snails and frog legs but they also have lots and lots of cheeses. There are so many French cheeses that experts have lost count! Some of the best known French cheeses are Camembert, Brie, Emmental, and Roquefort. These cheeses are all sorted into 8 categories to help count them and describe the type of cheese they are such as blue cheeses, goats cheeses, and soft cheeses with rind. France really knows their cheese!
We hope you enjoyed learning more things about France as much as we loved teaching you about them. Now that you know how majestic this country is, you can move on to learn about other geography stuff like: Germany, Ireland, Egypt and Brazil.
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