Family life, a limitless source of inspiration - Héloïse Weiner, illustrator and mother of 6 children.

Héloïse Weiner is the leader of a large tribe of 6 children, soon to be 7! A bilingual tribe that speaks French and English, Héloïse and her husband Mathias having moved to England after high school, to live there for about ten years before returning to live in France last year. As soon as her second child was born, Héloïse began to draw their family adventures. One thing led to another, Héloïse received comic book commissions and since 2013, she has become an illustrator and has never left her pencil! This choice of profession and her life path also pushed her to do her apprenticeship at home when they lived in England. We meet her today so that she can reveal all her secrets for organizing family life and professional life which complement each other wonderfully.

Where do you draw your daily inspiration from in your work?

Since I mostly make comics about family life, obviously the inspiration comes from my children! And with 6 children, we never run out of inspiration. Every time I see an anecdote that could be funny, I write it down in a little notebook or on my phone, then when I work, I reread it all, I see if it's still funny afterwards and how I could put it into a drawing. All these drawings are also a great way for me to keep all our family life memories. I wasn't very good at taking pictures, but I always loved drawing. When I was a child, I kept little notebooks where I made little doodles to note down what was happening in my life. I simply continued in my adult life and this is what it looks like today!

How does your family react to your work, to your drawings?

Children really like to see themselves in the drawings, they often reread my comics and it also brings back memories! Now that the older ones are old enough to understand, sometimes they look at me while I work, and they make little comments: “so-and-so doesn’t look like that”, “I have longer hair”, “you should do me like that”... Each one comes with their little comment. I try to explain to them that it’s not realistic drawing, that the important thing is that we identify each character well. Because my children would like me to really draw them exactly as they are, but it’s still drawing, comics!

Sometimes I sit in the living room and draw, and it encourages them to do the same. They'll get out sheets of paper, markers... I've already let them try out my tablet, they love it, they often ask me if they can try it again.

When you lived in England, you made the choice to homeschool. What made you make this choice, and how did you implement it with the children?




I studied to be a teacher, and in my education career, there were internships to do in primary school and I loved it! But I was a little frustrated by certain aspects, like the fact that everyone had to be assessed in the same way. And it was very academic, the child had to be able to read at a certain age, have certain notions of math at a certain age. I found that we were leaving other types of intelligence aside a little, because not all children are necessarily passionate about math, languages ​​or science. In England, where we lived at the time, homeschooling was more widespread than in France, and we met families who had made this choice. And it's true that when talking to them, and especially with children who had become adults and had never been to school, we realized that it opened the door to many other possibilities. Homeschooling also allows you to learn cooking, music, theater, lots of things that are not as valued at school as traditional subjects. So we wanted to try, but we always left the door open. We agreed that if for some reason it didn't work out, or if they wanted to go to school, we would of course let them make that choice. And that's what happened when we returned to France! We live in an area where we have friends, whose children get on very well with ours. And they go to school. And of course, the attraction of seeing these friends every day at school quickly took over. And for us, that wasn't a problem, because homeschooling has never been a "prison", we always wanted them to have a choice, so we enrolled them. And it's going really well! Their academic level was good, they are not behind at all, and they have integrated really well into their class, they are happy.

How did you organize yourself for learning at home?

We didn't follow a program to the letter, that is to say we didn't do math at 9am and French at 10am. For the older ones, we had a selection of activity books at home, and we let the children choose what they wanted to study each day. For the younger ones, I learned during my studies that from 0 to 5 years old, children learn mainly through play, so I never imposed anything for the nursery school children. If they wanted to do something, we did it with them. I never wanted to be my children's teacher, I always preferred to be my children's "mom". I like to share things with them, let them learn through play and discovery of the world. We went on a lot of outings and activities as a family. At first glance, it might seem un-educational, or at least un-academic, but in reality, we learn a lot through activities such as cooking, walks in nature or in the city. We made these outings learning moments, but the children never had the impression that the goal of these outings was to learn. It really happened naturally.

Another way we organized ourselves was to work around a theme. For one or two weeks, the children would focus on a subject, and we would do activities based on that theme. For example, the Middle Ages and knights. My older boys had a period where they were really into knights, and so that they could learn as much as possible, we went to the library to borrow books on knights and the Middle Ages, we focused our manual activities on this theme, we took them to visit castles… We follow closely what our children are passionate about, we think about it and we organize the activities based on what motivates them.

Could you give us some examples of activities to do as a family?

Our family loves to do Geocaching . It exists all over the world and it's free, you just have to download the application. We have GPS coordinates, and we go looking for a hiding place, a small treasure, often it's a notebook in which we write our first names to show that we managed to find the hiding place, sometimes there is a small object, which we can exchange for another small treasure. Above all, don't forget to go on a quest without a small treasure to exchange and a pen to sign the notebook, otherwise, it's a disaster! The children love this activity, and so do we! We discover new places around our home, we go on wonderful walks, we walk, we run, we play sports, we learn to read a map and some notions of geography! When we visit a new city, I go to the tourist office to see if there are any treasure hunts in town. It allows you to discover places differently, to learn more about the history of the city and it involves everyone, it makes for lovely memories.

Speaking of geography, we have a globe at home that we use regularly as a family. We will ask the children: “Find me this country, or show me where Europe is, show me a country that is part of Europe…” We try not to give them the answer right away, and to see if they can criticize each other, help each other, because children also learn a lot by teaching others, by repeating and showing what they have learned themselves. It seems that this is the best way to learn! It doesn’t look at all like a geography class at school, and yet, they learn a lot about the world thanks to this family game.

We love playing board games together. Obviously, when they were very young, we took it upon ourselves a bit because games for 2-4 year olds are less stimulating for adults! But we wanted the children to enjoy playing, so that we could play together later, and now that they are all grown up, it's great! We have fun, we have board game afternoons. There are so many great games these days, many people think of Monopoly, Ludo, classic games like that, but in fact, there is a crazy offer today, and there are a lot of them that have a lot of educational value!

For crafts, I often look online. I look for activities based on their age, or I look at what materials we have and for example, if we have any pom-poms and pipe cleaners left, and I look for what we can do with pom-poms and pipe cleaners. I also get inspired by what other parents do, for example on Instagram, I save a lot of posts and I come back to them when I'm lacking inspiration.

How do you adapt activities to each child's level?

We are starting to have a big age gap because the oldest is 9 years old. From time to time, we separate them into small groups, we will do an activity for the older ones, and another activity for the younger ones. We are lucky, our older ones often make the effort to do activities with the younger ones, because they know that after, it will be their turn and we always try to find a balance and do another activity that is more suited to their age.

We still often get together as a family to do activities that everyone enjoys, especially cooking! We have great cookbooks in which the recipes are not written, everything is in pictures, so that everyone can follow the recipe. The older ones help the younger ones and they feel proud to help. If the younger one needs help, they are there, and they are proud to say that they did it together!

The older ones really like to help the younger ones, at least that's how it is in my house. They're not perfect, mind you! There are arguments, like in all siblings. That's what family is!

You can find Héloïse Weiner on Instagram: @byheloiseweiner

And all these adventures on his blog: https://heloweiner.wixsite.com/website/blog