To teach?

I've been immersed in my little Anglophone community for a few weeks. There was the garage sale, and the trek downtown, that had me conversing a bit in French. But in general, these past few weeks have been spent with friends from the kids' Anglophone school, West Islanders and in our family cocoon. That's about to change.

My two oldest children go to an Anglophone preschool. I absolutely love everything about it—except that it's Anglophone. My daughter will enter her kindergarten year at the private school in September but will go to a Francophone elementary school the rest of her years. I'm going to be doing some work for the school in order to help pay for the pricey tuition, and so I've been mulling over what services I could offer. I was thinking along administrative lines, but another mom gave me an idea...teach French!

I have a long history of teaching English and French, both as foreign languages, to all age groups, from toddlers to retirees. And so while I'm not a native speaker of French, the idea to teach French to these preschoolers is very appealing to me. It's what's missing from this otherwise perfect school. Why shouldn't I step in and fill the gap?

While I've been getting excited about pitching this idea to the teachers, I've been deeply bothered by another issue: les moustiques. They're already out en masse, which is putting a real damper on our sunny afternoons. I've declared la guerre. Ideas so far: Mosquito Dunks, Mosquito Barrier, anti-mosquito bracelets, constructing homes for bats and/or birds that eat mosquitoes. Anyone else have any suggestions?

I'm also set up to add a bunch of new vocabulary to my kids' French arsenal. Summer is big-time homesteading in our household. We're canning, dehydrating, planting a garden (vegetables, fruit and herbs), drying clothes on the line, baking our own bread, pressing flowers and drying them for potpourri, etc. We've already forgotten what the inside of the house looks like (and trust me, no one wants to see the disorder at this point...). The days of waking up slowly in the mornings and planning our time over breakfast are fast approaching!!! I can't wait. I'm well aware of the fact that these are our last few months before my oldest goes off to full-day kindergarten. I want to savour them.