What a school year this has been! So different and so wonderful. I always write these posts in the summer and am amazed, looking back, at how long ago the beginning of the school year feels! It feels especially far-off this year because last August, we were in Quebec! The first few days were a shock of adjustment and discomfort, but by the time we had our back-to-school dinner we already loved where we lived. We learned so many things that can't be quantified in these homeschool posts! I did write a lot about our life in Quebec on my other blog, but it's hard to overstate the educational value—for our entire family—of living there!
Quebec's motto is "je me souviens," meaning "I remember." And I knew immediately this must be our family theme for the year as well. Not just because I wanted everyone to remember this unusual experience, but because I wanted them to remember who they became through that opportunity, and to whom they owed their gratitude—our Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ.
The thought of remembering has become a meaningful theme for me personally as I have pondered and digested our experience in Quebec, even after we've returned home.
I got forget-me-not necklaces for all of the girls to wear and remember Quebec.
And I got the boys forget-me-not ties!
I decided to make a bunch of traditional Quebecois foods for our dinner, and it was super fun to learn about the different traditional foods and where they came from. We had had some of these things at the cabane à sucre that we visited and I thought I might be able to even improve on some of them.😄 But it was a lot of cooking, and in our rental house kitchen I did not have all the things I had back at home, so there was definitely some flexibility and substitution needed too!
Since I knew I would have to be cooking all afternoon, I put the kids 100% in charge of decorations. We didn't have craft supplies, nor a printer, nor any of the things we might usually be able to get through Amazon or borrow from a neighbor—but that actually made it SO fun! We had paper and markers we'd bought for the little boys, and I did manage to find some forget-me-not napkins, and then the kids improvised all the rest!
Busy with all the preparations…
Goldie and Clementine picked flowers and berries from our yard and put them all over the dining room. They looked beautiful.
Daisy and Ziggy (and maybe Teddy and Junie too? And Goldie?) made little forget-me-nots to put all over the walls, and a lovely "Je me souviens" sign.
Ziggy drew a Quebec flag!
I put some quotes about remembering up on the walls, and we talked about the word "savor," related to the French "savoir," to know. You come to truly know something when you remember and savor it. I found little journal notebooks to give the kids also, to write about their experiences in Quebec so they could "savor" them and have all those things as "souvenirs" in their memory later on.
The kids set a beautiful table, using the drink shaker (whatever that is called) as a vase 😄
Everyone got dressed up, and Daisy even curled Clementine's hair!
(Oh, this makes me miss our balcony!)
Junie spent all day doing a zillion tiny braids in her hair. I don't know if it was really in honor of our back-to-school dinner as such…but it looked cute!
The food
Maple sugar pie
Somehow I didn't get a picture of us all together. But all the kids were there, from Malachi on down.
It was a back-to-school dinner we will always remember!
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