Quebec

I am Woman ~ Hear me Chop

I've warned you all that spring arrives late where I live, which is a more pleasant way of saying the winters are long. This winter has seemed especially so.

This past Sunday we hiked at a nearby mountain through calf deep snow. This is a local mountain, not one of the mountains deep in the middle of the peninsula where we expect snow this time of year.

chopped kindling

Last week there was snow on the ground every morning. (If you follow my instagram you know what I'm talking about.) The snow would melt by the end of the day, but still. Snow every day.

To fight back the dreariness of late winter/early spring snow I've been making fire in the wood burning stove.

Wood heating is new to us. Last winter we lived in our first home with a wood burning stove. We used it sporadically. Our living space was tiny and the electric heaters warmed it up super quick and clean (wood heating is messy).

This is our second year, and second home, heating with wood. Or rather, supplementing with wood. Heating a whole house with wood is an homemaking art and science that we have not perfected.

To heat well with wood you need a good system; which includes sourcing good good, stacking, chopping, etc. We haven't become adept yet at the system and so we use our electric heat a lot. Thankfully electricity is relatively cheap in Quebec.

As we neared the end of March we were relying on electric heat more and more. The days were slowly warming and I think Damien was tired of the wood and fire management. Like I said, we're new to this and it's not yet an easy part of our living routine.

But I missed the wood heat. The house does not have the same quality, or quantity of warmth when we use electric heat only.

fire hearth

At the end of March we took a spontaneous trip to visit my parents for Easter. Thursday morning we e-mailed my mom asking if we could come ("of course!"). Friday morning we were loaded in the car ready to go.

My dad is a master wood burning stove man. Ironically, I didn't grow up with wood heat. Wood is a more precious commodity on the prairies than it is in Nova Scotia or Quebec. This wood burning routine is new to all of us since living out east, but my Dad has it perfected.

Each morning I woke up at Mom & Dad's to a roaring fire in the hearth and I was warmed in my soul as much as my body.

I came home wanting to create the same effect. I need warmth in my soul this time of year as ~~we wait~~ we long for spring's warmth and color.

chopped fire by hearth

Something else I need this time of year is physical labor. I need to use my muscles and be in my body doing something grounding, something earthy.

So I'm chopping wood and making fire.

Not every day, but often. There is something so satisfying about an axe splitting wood. That heavy thunk, crack. And then the snap and sizzle of kindling catching flame.

I used to light a candle on winter mornings. A way of welcoming warmth and beauty into my days. Now, when I get up the sky is already bright. No candle is needed to break the dark.

But now, making fire has become my ritual for greeting and warming the day.

woman with axe

My kids, who love mythology, tell me I'm like the Greek goddess Hestia, goddess of the hearth and home. I'm not too sure about the goddess part but keeper of hearth and home sounds about right as far as my job description goes.

(For the record, there has been no snow this week, yet. Spring may be just around the corner.)

How to Learn a Second Language in Your Homeschool

(Post two of The Adventure of Learning series).

Written by guest contributor Aaron Myers of The Everyday Language Learner.

As my kids rolled onto the floor in front of the laptop for another episode of one of their favorite cartoons, the Anne of Green Gables animated TV series, I considered the opportunities we have as homeschool parents.

We can take our time. We work to focus on our kids’ strengths, helping them fall in love with the gifts and abilities they’ve been given and develop them to their full potential.

Writing is a chance to express ideas, share thoughts, and tell stories. It is real communication with others, like their cousins with whom they’ve been creating a running mystery, each letter containing a new clue or a secret code. Reading is no longer homework, but something you do for fun, for hours at a time and in your favorite chair, on the floor, or even in your bed.

That’s the goal anyway.

Homeschooling is not always easy. At the end of some days my wife is exhausted from the work of getting the kids to buy in, to do their share and pull their weight. On some days the rewards feel far less than adequate to keep at it. But for us there is another reason for homeschooling and it goes back to what the kids are watching - Anne of Green Gables, the animated television series - dubbed in Turkish.

I have yet to meet anyone who didn’t think that learning another language was a good idea. I suspect that you too - if you don’t already - would like to know another language. And you would love for your kids to know it as well.

Whether you are an individual wanting to learn for yourself or a homeschool mom or dad wanting to add a foreign language to the curriculum, I have a message for you:

Now is the time to begin the language learning journey.

But It’s Hard

As adults we tend not to repeat experiences that were difficult or painful in our past. The unfortunate reality for most of us however is that the foreign language classrooms of our youth were both difficult and painful.

Why would we do that again? I wouldn’t.

But thankfully, we don’t need to. Schools too often treat languages like a frog on the dissecting table. But the place to learn about frogs, at least in the beginning, is out at the pond, in its natural surroundings.

Language is the same. We should experience language before we have it explained to us. We should get exposure before we analyze it. And in the case of learning another language, play should most definitely come before work - for us and especially for our kids.

But I’m Busy

You're a mom. A homemaker. A dad. A homeschooler. A writer. A photographer. A cross country skier. You’re making a living. You’re raising kids. You’re doing your level best to create a life that brings freedom and joy and growth to you and your family.

And the thought of adding “learn another language” to the list seems overwhelming and out of the question.

I want to encourage you - don’t add it to the list. Rather, think about incorporating the language into your life, into your existing activities. Think fun. Think play. Think purpose.

What does that look like you ask?

Here are some ideas to help you wrap your mind around it. Renee and her crew are on the journey to learn French so I’ll tailor the ideas to the Tougas family:

Games in French - Renee wrote about her family’s love of the role playing game Pathfinder. Why not play it in French?
Cooking in French - This recipe look like a great snack Renee and the kids could cook up.
Books in French - What about finding a family favorite story that has been translated into French? Audiobooks are great if no one in the family can read French fluently.
French Music - Finding music in French may take some searching but will be well worth it.
Use Technology - Princess Learn French and apps like it are great tools to make learning languages fun and enjoyable.
Tutorials in French- I recently watched Renee’s video about making soap. What about making organic toothpaste? Renee could learn how by watching a tutorial in French.

Why should you learn another language?

And more importantly, why should you learn another language with your kids?

Learning another language with your kids offers a rare opportunity for you and your children. When you learn with your children they will:

see you as a learner - a real learner working, struggling even, to learn a new language.
see you when the rubber meets the road; as a mentor, a model, and as a fellow learner.
be able to collaborate and interact with you in ways that other topics just don’t allow - topics that by their standards you are the expert in.
be empowered because you are choosing to be dis-empowered, to step down and learn beside them.

The opportunity to learn a new language and to include your kids on that journey is an amazing blessing. You will learn from them and them from you in ways that math and science just don’t allow.

A new dynamic is created, one in which you are no longer the teacher but rather a fellow learner. And in this we can be confident that we will be teaching the lessons of hard work, discipline, problem solving and lifelong learning to our kids because we are with them on the journey.

That is why you should learn another language with your kids.

But I Don’t Know How

There is perhaps no more pressing question for learning a new language than the question of ‘how’.

How do we learn it? And for homeschool moms, how do we teach it?

It's not as hard as you think. I'm going to show you some ideas in a video.

At The Everyday Language Learner my passion is to empower learners from all over the world to know both why and how to learn other languages. I write regular articles to that end but have also created a number of great resources to empower learners on the journey.

Click here to see all the Everyday Language Guides.

I want to give FIMBY readers a special discount. Use the coupon code FIMBY to get 20% off of any guide.

Also, The Ten Week Journey, offered through my blog, is a free email course I developed to help walk ordinary people into the extraordinary life of the independent language learner.

~~~

Renee here again. I invited Aaron to write this post because if you want to learn another language as a personal or homeschool goal, I'd like to help you reach that goal. And Aaron is the guy to go to for help.

Aaron is a language coach, writer, and the author of numerous language guides. There's a lot of stuff on his site (which might overwhelm you a bit, it did me) so I'm personally recommending his Fly First Class package because it includes so much for such a great price, and remember you get a FIMBY discount!

My own language learning journey was really helped along by reading The Everyday Language Learner Guide to Getting Started (which is included in the Fly First Class.)

Aaron's teaching helps you learn another language in a real life, interest-driven context. His guides are written for the adult learner but what he teaches can be applied in a homeschool setting. In fact, the homeschool setting is perfect for the Everyday Language Learner.

This post has affiliate links.

Learning Doesn't Stop on the Weekends

This is what I wanted this winter. Days of winter play. Making and meeting friends at the ski hill. And snow, lots of snow.

It was one of those weekends. A weekend to make up for the last half of January. Damien's knee is now mended and the snow is falling. We skied 4 days in a row (three mornings and one full day), all at the hill. I had a telemark lesson Saturday morning that totally revolutionized my turning technique so that I actually enjoy telemark now. I'm still learning, to be sure, but it doesn't kill my thighs so very much. Juste une petite peu...

Speaking of which, my French is coming along well. Saturday afternoons Céline and I take an intense 4 hour class. It's a class for beginners and it's all in French. Our instructor is excellent and these immersion lessons are just what I (badly) needed to take my French language learning to the next level.

I'm starting to think in French, just a wee bit. I am trying to speak to our bilingual Francophone friends in French. I want too. When I sat down to write this after a weekend of conversing en français with as many people as possible (not very well mind you but trying, and trying hard) I wanted to start writing in French. That has never happened to me before. This is weird. And not entirely welcome as I don't want to lose my writer's voice with some bilingual confusion going on in my brain circuitry.

There's a huge amount of learning going on in my life right now. And I feel I am being stretched physically and intellectually this season (and emotionally when it comes to what I'm learning as a mother). And you know what? When it doesn't scare the heck out of me - it really excites me. I'm learning another language! I get to speak this second language in my everyday life. It's not an academic exercise for me. I'm learning how to telemark ski. I'm learning how to let go and let my kids grow.

This season, when it doesn't exhaust me (because sometimes it does), learning feels vibrant. Like living in vivid color.

And I remember why I am so passionate about lifelong, interest-led learning. Because learning is a great way to live. There is no buzz, no high like the feeling of growing beyond your boundaries.