French Songs to Teach Food Vocabulary
Food might be the unit students look forward to most. Everyone has an opinion about croissants. The tricky part usually is not the vocabulary, it is the grammar that comes with it: du pain, de la confiture, des fraises, and the moment students realize that "je ne mange pas" turns everything into de.
Songs give students dozens of repetitions of those patterns without another fill-in-the-blank sheet. Here are three French songs to teach food, ordered by level.
All three are on Roxxem with French lyrics, the music video, and games like Whac-a-Word and Quiz Ninja.
1. "Au petit déjeuner" by Alain Le Lait (A2)
A cheerful song about breakfast foods, from cereal to croissants. It is simple and catchy, which makes it a good fit for the first week of a food unit. Use it to introduce petit déjeuner vocabulary and practice partitive articles: Au petit déjeuner, je mange du pain et je bois du jus d'orange. Students can then describe their own breakfast, or the breakfast they wish they had.
🔗 Explore "Au petit déjeuner" on Roxxem!
2. "Les cornichons" by Nino Ferrer (A2+)
A 1960s classic built around one long, fast list of everything a group packs for a picnic, from pickles and mustard to bread and butter. The partitive shows up over and over, so students hear the pattern in a natural rhythm. Pause before the last verse and ask students to guess how the picnic ends. Roxxem also tags it for weather vocabulary, so it can bridge two units.
🔗 Explore "Les cornichons" on Roxxem!
3. "Le petit pain au chocolat" by Joe Dassin (B1)
A sweet story song set in a French bakery, built around a daily pain au chocolat and a shy romance. Use it for bakery vocabulary like la boulangerie, le boulanger, and la boulangère, for polite ordering, and for retelling a story in the past once students have heard it a few times.
🔗 Explore "Le petit pain au chocolat" on Roxxem!
A Quick Food Activity
Turn your classroom into a boulangerie. After the songs, students role-play ordering with "Je voudrais..." and "C'est combien ?", using only food words they heard in the lyrics. A paper menu and a few play euros are all you need.
Food songs are easy to love, and that is the point. When students are humming a list of picnic foods on the way out the door, the partitive has a better chance of sticking.
Want more ideas? Try building a full lesson around one song, browse the French class playlist everyone is using in 2026, or see how one teacher’s middle schoolers learn French grammar through music.
🔗 Find all three songs, with French lyrics, games, and ready-to-teach activities, on Roxxem.