Every year the International Au Pair Association opens up to Au Pair of the Year nominations. This year, one of our host family’s decided to nominate their wonderful au pair. Although she did not win, we wanted to take a moment to shed some light on Nina. Here is what her host family had to say about her:   Dear IAPA Panel,  My husband and I would like to nominate Nina for the 2022 IAPA Au Pair of the Year Award. We hope your experience reading about Nina is as special as the year we experienced with her.  Nina came to Canada at the very end of July 2020 and we had the pleasure ..read more

January 2021 Policy Update This is a notice regarding policy updates for 2021. Due to the impact of COVID-19, Adanac Au Pair is not able to place new Au Pairs until at least July 2021. We want to let you know now so you have time to find suitable childcare for your family in the interim. Our Au Pairs receive their work permit through International Experience Canada (IEC), a federal program encouraging young adults to travel and work across Canada. IEC stopped accepting new applicants in March 2020 due to the global pandemic and in November 2020, they officially made an announcement to stop app ..read more

Have you found yourself in a position where you are now having to be an Au Pair AND an online learning assistant? During these times, families are asking their Au Pair to help out more with homework by leading online learning. Here are some tips and tools to help you through online learning: 1. Make a schedule. This may be your saving grace to help you with online learning. Your host kids are going to be used to following a schedule in their classroom. At the beginning of each school year, teachers share a schedule with their students so they know exactly what to expect each day of the week. B ..read more

You will notice that this blog post is very familiar. While we like to remind our Host Families of ways to help their Au Pair through homesickness during the holidays, we thought we would update our post with some tips on how to help during the holidays…in a global pandemic. During the holidays, your Au Pair may become homesick somewhere in between the first day of advent and New Year’s Eve. Homesickness may be fuelled by the fact that this will probably be their first time away from their family during the holiday season all while living through a global pandemic. Part of the reason your Au P ..read more

My Dream Experience as an Au Pair in Canada By: Aline Mory Part 3: Working through a pandemic Even if the corona virus has been changing so much in the world it didn’t change that much in my life as an Au Pair. I mean of course my thoughts changed from “I’ll stay for another year” to “maybe I have to leave tomorrow” but luckily I could stay and work as planned until the end of June 2020. My host family was again very kind to me and gave me time to decide about staying or leaving but I didn’t want to leave at all and they still needed me so I stayed – which was the best decision of my life! &n ..read more

My Dream Experience as an Au Pair in Canada By: Aline Mory Part 2: My relationship to my host family From the very beginning I’ve felt taken to the heart of my whole host family and I also locked them in my heart I immediately. But even though I didn’t believe it could happen, we definitely still lived through the four famous (gentle) phases of culture shock. The first few weeks were like the very classic honeymoon phase: Everything was new and exciting, we enjoyed the summer break in the pool, with the bigger family, at Lake Eire and Lake Huron, I got introduced to everything in the househol ..read more

My Dream Experience as an Au Pair in Canada By: Aline Mory Part 1: The words “I will always remember you” and a cute hug of your host kid are probably the dream for every Au Pair at the end of their time abroad –at least it was a dream for me which I’ll always remember. My name is Aline, I’m a 20 year old German girl who just recently spent 10 months of the school year 2019/20 as an Au Pair in a Canadian family and how I got to this special goodbye, how I decided to become an Au Pair in Canada, what the process looked like for me to get there, how I built my relationship to my host famil ..read more

Thanksgiving is around the corner! We thought we would give you a step-by-step guide of how to celebrate Thanksgiving with your Au Pair. Step 1: Explain What Thanksgiving Is For most of us, Thanksgiving is a time to enjoy the changing colours, eat a weird amount of food and take an afternoon naps. Although all of those things are lovely, it’s important to remember why we celebrate Thanksgiving: multiple reasons. If you actually read into the reason why we celebrate Thanksgiving, it predates the pilgrims meeting the Wampanoag. It’s one of those holidays where it has different meanings for each ..read more

Summer is a time for soaking up the sun, drinking iced tea and reading! There is nothing better then to spend an afternoon laying on a blanket in the grass and getting caught up with your favourite characters. By reading classic Canadian books, you can learn more about the Canadian culture, languages and connect with your host kids. Here are my top 8 Canadian books for children: The Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier. This book is a classic with a capital “C”. Small town Quebec, hockey rivalry and a reference to the Eaton catalogue will send you back to a simpler time. Read this book to the hocke ..read more