Cafe Cupid: St. Michael CES French Immersion students host Valentine’s Day inspired cafe for school community

Mar. 3, 2025

The stage inside of the gymnasium at St. Michael Catholic Elementary School in Cobourg was transformed into a French cafe complete with small round tables, a backdrop featuring the Eiffel Tower in Paris and soothing music.

It was called Cafe Cupid, a two-day Valentine’s Day inspired culinary event put on by the Grade 4/5 French Immersion class.

The first day was for students and on the second day, the cafe opened for parents to attend.

“We have organized a cafe for the school. Each student in the school will get to visit the cafe. They get a three-course meal, drinks, appetizer and a main course,” said Allyson Banville, Grade 4/5 French Immersion teacher at St. Michael CES. “The students organized the menu and decided what they wanted to serve and created the menu.”

Banville said the cafe was funded through grant monies as well as donations from the Parent Council.

Students then came up with a budget to purchase groceries at the store.

“We took a visit to the grocery store and the students had activities there to learn about name brand versus no-name, unit pricing to find out if it was cheaper to buy in bulk or smaller quantities, they weighed produce and every student had something on the grocery list for the cafe,” Banville added. “They also learned how to do change, creating the bill and calculating taxes for the bill for the cafe.”

Students also did all of the advertising, including newspaper captions and posters, as well as the booking of reservations for the event.

There were volunteers helping out including teachers and parents.

The students, acting as servers, had a vocabulary script that was in French to ask fellow students, who were dining, what they’d like to have. The dining students also had French vocabulary prompts they could follow.

“We have the Grade 3’s dining now, they’ll leave and we’ll clean up and the next class will come in. It’s a lot of fun,” said Ella Cole, Grade 4 student.

“Everyone is invited. It’s so much fun to be doing this,” added Lola Brydson, Grade 4 student.

Students also rotated through jobs in the kitchen and as hosts for the cafe.