Au secours! Ideas for entertaining French exchange student?

We live in France and have had several french kids come and stay with us to better their english over here, instead of going to the UK. We take them out a few times (as unlike an exchange trip they are with just us all week) we cook very English food for them, we play lots of board games as these encourage speech and understanding - Old Maid, Happy Families, Snap, being typically English, plus Uno, Monopoly, Countdown, Piratology.

We watch a few dvds in English with subtitles, and let our son and the child chill out and get to know one another. Our DS loves it (particularly likes having girls to stay, even though he is only eleven) and is very helpful at speaking lots of english to them. However, if they both get tired, they revert back to French!
English breakfast
Toad in the Hole (Crapaud dans le trou makes them laugh)
Shepherd's Pie (torte de berger?)
Roast dinner with yorkshire pud, roast potatoes etc
Custard!
Marmite on toast
Dog walking in the country
Visit a local stately home, or park
supermarket trip as theirs are so different to ours
bowling (we always do that and everyone has a good time and gets cheered on or commiserated with in both languages!)
look at photos - his or yours as this can stimulate conversation
Have a nice time

A bit left field, but the Imperial War Museum is genuinely interesting to more serious European kids. The WW1 and WW2 sections describe the misery of war very well and I assume it is one of the best museums of its kind in Europe.

Borough market for lunch afterwards and a walk along or trip on the river. Or take the Jubilee line from Waterloo (walking distance from the IWM) or from London Bridge (eg Borough Market) takes you to Westfield East at Stratford. Superdry recommended. Or then take one stop on the DLR to Pudding Mill Lane and have lunch at the Container Cafe overlooking the Olympic Park.

On a Sunday Colombia Road, Brick Lane and Spitalfields markets make for a good day out, with lots of places to stop and eat: beigals, curry, etc, and the sense of the different waves of immigration which make London the cosmopolitan city it is now.

I would agree with encouraging them to do some things in a group. It gives the English kids some responsibility as well.

Why oh why did I let DC drop Latin in favour of two MFL. Roman centurians would not expect to come and stay. And how do schools select partners? On paper at least, our exchange appears to have nothing in common with DD.

Our French student just arrived (13 yr old girl)!! dd spent a week in France over half term - she had a fabulous time and basically the weekend there was spent with her french partner, her friends and their English partners..they went bowling as a group, cooked pizzas (very authentically French ) and at friends houses hanging out playing board games etc. dd loved it and her French did improve!
As someone else said, the child will have been busy doing the touristy stuff during the week, so chilling out at the weekend doing normal teenage activities will be best.

Unless the school have specifically banned it (I know some do!) it might be worth getting your son to speak to some of the other English hosts and arranging to do something as a group for some of the time. The exchange student will enjoy meeting other people as well as getting to spend some time with some of his friends. If you are happy with leaving them alone for a short time the chance to do some souvenir shopping/eat lunch out without being closely chaperoned will probably go down well also. Bonne chance!

A film? And making their own pizza afterwards?

The supermarket is a good one, and then cook whatever weird concoction he fancied from there. I always loved going to the supermarkets and looking at what was different.

Is there time for your DS to write (I guess it's email these days!) and ask if there's anything your guest would like to do/try?

isn't the touristy stuff covered during the week? so what you need to do at the weekend is 'entertain'. the point of an exchange is to improve language skills i think, so anything that gets them doing something so they can talk if they like/need to, but not if they don't is ideal.

my dds are still young, but i remember as a child i and my brother both did exchanges, can't remember what i did with mine at all, but my brother and his partner definitely went bowling (with the whole family), played le ping pong at the local sport centre, going to the cinema is good.

ah one thing that was a real hit with my (very homesick) exchange partner was a day at some friends of my parents house, they had 3 young daughters who just loved my partner and made such a fuss of her that she completely forgot she was miserable. not much use for OP, but a suggestion nonetheless - small girls for big girls!

Do you live on an island in the middle of spaghetti junction, gramercy ?

And you need to give him le rosbif.

A carvery perhaps? He would not see many Yorkshire puddings, over cooked vegetables etc at home.

The Artist is a good idea (and respectful to the French). Take him to a Norman church too. Avoid Cafe Rouge.

Play Boggle. French boy has to use English words. Your DS uses French words.

Our exchange is coming froma fairly rural part of France. We intend to spend a lot of time in London with her. Poor thing might be terrified.

Don't you have a 15th century gastro-pub serving local lamb chops and sausages?

The seaside etc is always a bit dodgy in England for French exchange students, who are (let's be honest) used to an entirely different quality of seaside experience, in particular the weather and the temperature of the water.

England is above all a destination for heritage and cultural tourism, but if he has been hiked around cultural sites all week, he won't want that. Shopping and family time sounds OK to me.

We have a Canadian exchange student in ten days time.

We had a French boy for a week last May and have a French girl coming this May.

Take them for fish and chips (at the seaside if you live near the sea) eaten out of the paper.

We live near enough to London that we were able to go for the day, and I made sure we went on a double decker bus, on the Tube, a boat down the river and in a black cab, plus the normal sights.

Do some cooking with them - we did a big fried breakfast, a roast dinner followed by trifle, toad in the hole etc. Take them to the supermarket to do the weekly shop.

Visit any local National Trust/English Heritage type places. Maybe a funfair if there are any local to you, will it be too early in the year for any local fetes?

Maybe a BBQ at home for a group of them.

Is your son going to France first? Just so you could see hoe the French family entertain your son.

We've had nine exchanges and all jolly good ... costs an arm and a leg but just do what you'd be doing with your own anyway plus a few treats. If they've been well-paired it will be a doddle. And give them access to computer so they can Facebook if they get lonely. School always told my DSs to do their language homework with exchanges too.

Oh mon dieu. Have an exchanger coming for almost two week in September!!!

Friend took her DS's French exchange to Go Ape! Pricy, but they had a great time apparently. There are plenty of them up and down the country.

A professional football match, if you have a local team and he likes football! With a cup of bovril and a pie at half time! Or cricket if he is coming in summer. You don't have to stay all day.

Pub lunch.

Get together with your DS's friends and their exchanges and take them to a laser quest type place.

I am interested in this, as we have a Spanish girl coming to stay in the summer!